Review: The Rotter's Club by Jonathan Coe

The Rotters’ Club is Jonathan Coe’s 6th novel and winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in 2001. The story follows the lives of teenager Benjamin Trotter – who composes pieces of music for a girl he has never spoken to – his friends and their families growing up in 1970s Birmingham. Set amidst a backdrop of economic turmoil, increasing struggles between Government and the workers, and more than casual racism, art too closely imitates life for a reader in late 2008…

The story is largely told from the point of view of Benjamin (or Bent Rotter as he is known to his school friends), but the narrative cleverly weaves in events from the perspective of other characters and often uses articles from the school magazine, letters and diary entries to fill in the gaps in the reader’s knowledge and round out the story. I’ve seen it labelled as a ‘coming of age’ novel, but really the issues that it deals with make it so much more than that.

All of the characters are engaging, and are always very clearly realised. From the Philip Chase, Benjamin’s best friend, who has a minor obsession with all things Tolkien, to Bill Anderton, having an extra-marital fling with a typist from the Longbridge factory where he works. True to life the cast are not always pleasant, but are very often laugh-out-loud funny.

Jonathan Coe is an author fast becoming one of my favourites. I enjoyed the Rotters’ Club immensely and would heartily recommend it, particularly if you’re old enough to remember the birth of punk, the three-day week, and the rise of the Thatcher government. My only criticism was going to be that it ended too soon, but then I turned the final page to see that there is a sequel. My bookshelves runneth over.