Customer Reviews

The Winshaw Legacy: or, What a Carve Up!

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This is the first Coe book I've read and I loved it. It's funny and clever, develops the plot in a fragmented, looping chronology with multiple perspectives, sources, and interlocking stories - all presided over by a very unhappy and frustrated lead narrator. You know, the sort of things you find in Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, and Will Self novels (and seemingly all serious films since at least `Pulp Fiction'). But it is more straightforward, with less literary ambition, or pretension, than what I've read from those authors. The story is much easier to follow, and one can say exactly what happens at the end, rather than speculating on the desultory and stridently ambiguous finishes those other authors frequently give us.

The unfashionable clarity is a result of the book's overt politics. I find that Amis and Self bury their political commentary in stories that focus on how tormented their characters feel by the unexplained vagaries of life and how irreversibly complex it's all become. Coe, on the other hand, is willing to identify and blame the forces that have made society such a mess and living so hard to figure out. It's not some Fat Controller with supernatural powers, nor a mysterious seeming-friend doing improbable things with the money system to play out a personal grudge. It's right-wing politicians and businesses who, among other things: control our news sources and fill them with meaningless gossip or misleading agitprop, stoke up wars and profit on arms sales, industrialise food production at the expense of the ecology and consumer health, and intentionally ruin our public services to serve their theological devotion to laissez faire economics. In this way, Coe actually has more intellectual heft than the authors who imply that the world is just cosmically, unfathomably unfair and unpleasant. He's telling us that the malignant forces are entirely within our control, were we willing to stand up to the bent plutocratic filth that are allowed to run our governments and economy.

This is one of those books that I put off reading for years, despite the fact that countless people recommended it. The number of times I found myself cornered at parties by the kinds of people who really rate "Birdsong" or "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" was enough to deter me. On top of that, I hated the title. I thought it was a terrible title for a book (and sometimes that is enough).

When I finally did decide to give the thing a go, it was for the most shallow reason conceivable: I read an interview in which Thom Yorke admitted that "What a Carve Up!" was a huge influence on "The Bends". Now, it isn't like I'm the world's biggest Radiohead fan or anything, but I have to admit that I was intrigued to learn the relationship between the book and the CD (and having read the book, I can see what inspired Thom Yorke).

Loathe as I am to admit it (for reasons that are not even completely clear to myself), "What a Carve Up!" is a barnstormer: it's like an enormous brass band, made up of twenty or thirty thousand people, making its way through the bendy curvy streets of some polite English village in the thundering rain. Which may seem like a strange analogy, but I'll explain: the enormous brass band because it is funny (funny like that old Ealing movie, "Kind Hearts and Coronets" - in fact, there is the best recommendation - if you like that movie, read this book); the bendy curvy streets of the village, because there is a pervasive Englishness at work here, the same Englishness that lurks at the heart of Julian Barnes' best novels, the same Englishness that lurks at the heart of AS Byatt's "Possession"; and the thundering rain? Well. The thundering rain would be the stark political context the book expands within: the abuse of the upper classes, the corruption that became emblematic in English politics in the 1980s (manifest in the talk of insider trading, arms dealing, the old school tie, Miners' Strikes, call it what you will).

Taken together, this means that Jonathan Coe has fashioned the kind of novel you don't read all that often (proof positive that the novel is alive and well and running three marathons a week).

Jonathan Coe's "The Winshaw Legacy" is a multifaceted, occasionally humorous, often touching, and insightful tale about greed and its consequences. It's also a love story and several mysteries skillfully wrapped into one cohesive novel. Somewhat farcical and rather black in the humor department, this excellent novel tells the story of three (focusing on the last two) generations of Winshaws--a prominent, wealthy, and well-connected Yorkshire family.

Coe divides his novel into two parts (after a brief prologue detailing two tragic events involving the Winshaws (one during WWII and the other in 1961--the novel essentially runs from 1940 to 1990 and is set in Yorkshire and London)). Part One alternates between the engaging first person narrative of Michael Owen (a novelist who's lost inspiration and stopped communicating with humankind for 2-3 years, one of the intriguing mysteries in this novel) who has been tapped by Tabitha Winshaw (the only putatively insane family member to be committed) to write the Winshaw Memoirs and a third person narration detailing the lives of the third generation Winshaws.

Owen's narration is full of mystery and wonder. Why has he essentially withdrawn from society the last three years? What exactly does he have to do with the Winshaws? How is it all going to end? And what does a movie he saw as a child have to do with the Winshaws (you'll find out)? As if all this isn't enough, Coe throws in a very touching encounter with one of Owen's neighbors (the well-drawn Fiona) who finally draws Owen out of his torpor. This is engaging stuff, although not as humorous as expected.

The chapters detailing the lives of third generation Winshaws are equally captivating. Coe cleverly mixes real world events and personalities (Margaret Thatcher and Saddam Hussein for two) with the greedthristy Winshaws to detail the depraved nature of his powerful antagonists. Whether it's politics, gossip, bio-agriculture, illegal arms dealing, or shady financial dealing, these six Winshaws are painted (in one instance, literally) in a rather unpleasant shade of greed and amorality. And all the while hanging over these details is the mystery of the first two tragic events from the prologue (the death of one Winshaw in 1942 and the death of an intruder at Winshaw Towers in 1961).

Part Two of Coe's novel is a rollercoaster of a finish and provides the solution to the many mysteries that have evolved throughout the novel as well as a tragic, over-the-top conclusion. Coe may have overstepped the bounds a little with the ending (there is a lot going on in this novel) as one mystery is unraveled after another and the events leading up to the novel's conclusion occur with headspinning rapidity.

"The Winshaw Legacy" is an entertaining read and contains some terrific writing and commentary on greed and its consequences. It's not as humorous as I expected and much more touching and trenchant than I would have guessed. Overall, a worthy read and highly recommended.

Michael Owen has been hired by 81-year old Tabitha Winshaw to produce a biography of her powerful British family. In 1942, Godfrey Winshaw's plane was shot down by the Germans, but Tabitha has always suspected that her other brother Lawrence had caused Godfrey's death to protect his traitorous business dealings with the enemy. As a result, the family had committed her to an asylum the past forty-five years. By the 1990s, the next generation of Winshaws have each amassed considerable power and wealth through grossly amoral means. Comprising the bulk of the book, Part One alternates between Owen's study of the family and a third-person history of the six Winshaw children. Connections surface throughout as the complex story flows toward Part Two's murderous conclusion back at Winshaw Towers. Coe's themes of selfish excesses in the defense industry, agribusiness, government and the media seem especially prescient ten years later.

Some reviewers criticise "What A Carve Up!" for over-the-top satire, cartoonish portrayals of purely evil characters, and shrill polemic style. I got to the book in America in July, 2002, and while I agree that the bad guys are dealt with simplistically, the treatment may not be so far off the mark. Ten years after Coe researched this book, all his issues remain in the headlines. The West is gearing up again to topple the monster we created and armed in Saddam Hussein. Agribusiness conglomerates have devastated what remained of small farm America, brought other trouble to the towns where their enormous operations brutalise the workers and animals; and people only wonder more about the ever-increasing hormone and feed treatments used to make our food. Anyone who tunes in to certain American TV and radio networks, or reads certain columnists, will notice that right wing politicians and pundits have gone on to perfect the demonically dishonest rhetorical style Coe goes after (particularly on pp 137-138, 63-64, 385-88, 313 of the paperback edition titled "The Winshaw Legacy").

As for the charge that Coe unfairly makes greed out to be a bad thing, what Thomas Winshaw does to Phocas Motor Services in the book (pp 322-24 of my edition) was played out in many much worse factual scenarios that I know of in the US throughout the 1980's. (Look at what US Steel did to southeast Chicago, for starters.) And his analysis of this sort of capitalism couldn't be any more relevant with all the short-sighted and criminally dishonest market manipulations by politically connected that are coming to light Stateside in 2002 (Enron, Harken, Halliburton, Dynegy, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Adelphia...). Think of the havoc that these scandals have brought to individual lives among employees and fundholders who counted on these `businessmen' - really a network of interconnected charlatans - to be running sustainable companies, not inflating the value of their options to whatever unsustainable level would maximise their personal wealth. Lack of subtlety should be the last criticism pinned on someone who addresses this sort of outrage head-on.

In short, you don't need to be British to get this book, not even to appreciate the parts devoted to the National Health Service. The points he makes are just as relevant to what's happened in America under Reagan and Bushes I and II. I agree with the critcism that Coe panders to upper-class resentment by attributing all these various corruptions to one aristocratic family, when it's untitled corporate conservatives throughout society who need blaming. But he is doing a satire, and the aristocratic trope serves as the novel's framing device.

Jonathan Coe was born in 1961. The film "What a Carve Up!" (aka "No Place Like Homicide") was released the same year. Thirty-four years later, Coe published this book of the same name. The US prints are titled "The Winshaw Legacy." Is Coe's book the story of the film? Yes and No. The film is just a character in the story. The film and the story get bizarrely intertwined towards the end.

Coe carves up quite a story here, but it's not the dainty carving of a romantic sculptor. It's the irreverent slash of the nonconformist knife. It's the wayward chiselling away by the postmodernist pen. Out of these strokes emerges a story that takes stereotypes to an absurd level. Yet the absurdity doesn't offend your intelligence. It's as if the author signs an invisible pact with the reader: "Yes, you know it's exaggerated, so do I, but what the heck!"

The Winshaws represent a bunch of opportunist parasites who have checked into the world without the baggage of conscience. A columnist who generates mindless trash endlessly, an art dealer who sells fame for sex, a merchant banker with a morbid voyeuristic streak, a livestock farmer whose way of dealing with economically unviable male chicks is to put them in a mill "capable of mincing 1000 chicks to pulp every two minutes" or to gas them with chloroform or carbon dioxide... you'll find the worst imaginable faces of post-War England here, caricatured to contortion beyond recognition. Each chapter is a peep at the plot from a different angle. The principal narrator is a young writer called Michael Owen who is commissioned to write a biography of the Winshaw family. Most divergent outlooks mingle and collide and so do the characters in ways stranger than fiction, culminating in a kind of nemesis any deus ex machina would stay away from.

"What a Carve Up!" is a wild cocktail. Cheers!

This is a brilliant and hilarious dissection of the social and political landscape of Britain in the self serving 1980's. Jonathan Coe shows that there is life left in the political novel and he chooses his targets impeccably. The media, the arms trade, intensive farming, he hones in on all worlds of greed and class corruption and spears them mercilessly. Coe is the best young British author and all of his novels should be sought ouit. I heartily recommend Dwarves of Death.

Re-reading the final chapters of the book last night I realised they read much as a short story would. It is more than a little praise to say that not only Jonathan Coe's book contains enough material for several books but that the one he has authored is superior to the mere summ of its parts. It is rare for a novel to be both so cleverly gripping and so poignant, so well researched (I was flabbergasted by the precision of the part about industrial chicken production) and so funny.

But there's also a political dimension in the book that is quite clear and a little disingenuous: all evil, it seems to say, comes from greed, all the greed is concentrated in the upper-classes: two more than dubious propositions. Happily I must say, otherwise one would be tempted to resort to the kind of solution suggested in the book by Morty Windshaw.

Rarely does an author strike a note in their work which successfully slices and dissects the society they live in. Orwells 'Keep the Aspidistra Flying' is one. Even more rarely (and better) is when it gathered up in such an entertaining way as here. Like most great books you will read it in one great gulp and then return again and again, each character in turn fascinating and appalling. Americans - read this to learn more from this book about British history than any textbook; and if English - read simply to feel embarrassed by the truthfulness of it all...

I've read the book in italian transation, and it's really well-written, I think Jonathan Coe is going to be one of the top emerging talents, and this can be considered his masterpiece, together with "The house of sleep".

There's a great critic to contemporary English society and politics, referred in particular to Miss Tatcher's government, analysed with his clever ability.

It's one of the best book I've ever read.