Following on from The Rotters Club time has now moved forward to the 1990’s and a new Blair-ite Britain is about to come into being with Benjamin Trotter’s brother an MP in the heart of New Labour. We follow Benjamin’s life through his own thoughts and those involved in his life. Although a little too neatly tied up at the end this is still a great follow up to the previous novel.
May 2010 Guest Editor John Boyne on Jonathan Coe...
A great novelist. Quirky subject matters, surprising characters, eccentric plots. The kind of writer who can leave the reader laughing out loud, a rare gift. The pair of novels The Rotters’ Club and The Closed Circle are modern masterpieces.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
Win a Copy of The Sisters of Hope Square by Faith Hogan and a Bucket List Scratch Book
Closing date: 04/07/2026
Jonathan Coe's previous novel, The Rotters' Club, was a novel of innocence: a nostalgic, humorous evocation of adolescent life in 1970s Britain. The Closed Circle is its mirror image: a novel of experience. On Millennium night, with Blair presiding over a superficially cool, sexed-up new version of the country, Benjamin Trotter finds himself watching the celebrations on his parents' TV in the same Birmingham house in which he grew up. He is watching, in fact, his younger brother, Paul, now a bright young New Labour MP who has bought wholeheartedly into the Blairite dream. Neither of them can know that their lives are about to implode.Set against the backdrop of Britain's racial and social tensions and the country's increasingly compromised role in America's 'war against terrorism', The Closed Circle shuttles between London and Birmingham, taking in fat cats, media advisers and political protestors. As its characters struggle to make sense of the perennial problems of love, vocation and family in a changing world, it offers a bitter-sweet conclusion to the unfinished business of The Rotters' Club.
The Closed Circle features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
The Closed Circle is available in Paperback
The Closed Circle was written by Jonathan Coe and published by Penguin Books Ltd
The Closed Circle has 432 pages
£9.89
