"This immersive exploration of Britain through four of generations focuses on key events to create a profound and funny portrait of a nation, with an unforgettable woman at its chocolate-rich heart."
What should it be called, this special place?
Perhaps more than any other contemporary novelist, the work of Jonathan Coe highlights the captivating narratives that can be created when humour is used for serious purposes. I would go as far as to say that this has always been his mission, which means I could have picked almost any of his novels to illustrate the point. I could have picked The Rotters Club perhaps or Middle England (both of which you should definitely read), but in the end, I chose his most recent novel, Bournville. This is not just because it’s set in my home city (Birmingham, which is also Coe’s) but because it is that rarest of beasts – a genuine state of the nation novel that is profound, thoughtful but also eminently readable. All books are ‘readable’ of course, even the bad ones, but very few will give the reader such a rich, multi-layered and laugh-out-loud funny reading experience.
Bournville (the Birmingham suburb built by Cadbury’s) begins as the Covid pandemic is about to sweep through Europe, before we travel back in time to examine key moments in the history of Mary Clarke and her extended family. It’s one that reflects the major turning points in the nation’s history: from the 1966 World Cup final to Brexit; the Queen’s coronation to the death of Princess Diana. It’s a book about what brings us together and what drives us apart. It’s a love letter to the people of this country that doesn’t shy away from telling a few painful home truths. It’s a poignant and powerful novel, more so I would argue, than it would otherwise be, without the humour that runs through it like the filling in a Cadbury’s crème egg.
Tender and wickedly funny, Jonathan Coe’s Bournville takes readers on a sweeping, stirring journey through British history – seventy-five years’ worth of lives bound up in Britain’s social shifts, from VE Day, through to COVID tragedies.
The family at the heart of this deliciously engaging social saga live in picture-perfect, peaceful Bournville, a suburb of Birmingham and home to the famous chocolate factory that’s employed most residents for decades. We first meet Mary as an eleven-year-old in 1945, when she’s swept up in VE Day celebrations, and follow her family through pivotal moments in British history — the coronation; England winning the World Cup in 1966; the investiture of the Prince of Wales in 1969; the 1981 wedding of Charles and Diana; Diana’s funeral in 1997.
More recent moments include Euro-scepticism of the nineties, as revealed through the “chocolate war” with Brussels, with pertinent references to Boris Johnson’s ambition, arrogance, charisma and rule-breaking at that time. Then there’s the outbreak of COVID in 2020 - the lockdowns, the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the agonising loneliness, and devastating loss.
In characteristic style, Coe’s observations are delivered in the authentic voices of his characters, lightly peppered with occasional amusing interjections from the narrator. With its heart-rending ending made all the more poignant by the Author’s Note, Bournville is a cleverly constructed, consummately compelling account of British lives. As Mary’s mother Doll observes near the start of the novel: “Past, present and future: that was what she heard in the sound of the children’s voices from the playground… Everything changes, and everything stays the same”, which cuts to the core of this beautifully-told story.
| Primary Genre | Historical Fiction |
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From the bestselling, award-winning author of Middle England comes a profoundly moving, brutally funny and brilliantly true portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family.
In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades.
Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave.
As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family - and their country - closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?
Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.
Bournville features in the following genres: Historical Fiction, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Second World War fiction, Fiction, General Fiction, War, combat and military adventure fiction, Action Adventure, Books of the Month, Recommendations
Bournville is available in Paperback, Hardback
Bournville was written by Jonathan Coe and published by Viking an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd
Bournville has 353 pages
£8.99
