Rotter'S Club, The

Description: Three children inherit the editorship of their school magazine and put their own distinctive spin on the events in the 1970's - the collapse of "Old Labour", strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension - and find out about sex, music, and the English class system along the way. Review: This novel focuses on a quartet of clever, mischievous Birmingham teenagers who get their hands on their school magazine and wreak havoc. While their parents struggle with collapsing marriages and union troubles at the Longbridge plant, they write parodies, reviews and fraudulent letters that provide a hilarious counterpoint to the adult world. Anyone old enough to remember Blair Peach and the dawn of punk rock may not feel like revisiting the 1970s, but Coe's novel makes it funny as well as farcical. 'That woman will never be Prime Minister of this country,' Benjamin Trotter's father predicts of Mrs Thatcher, in one of many ironies granted by hindsight. Underneath the story of the four boys' sexual and romantic adventures runs the stony vein of political satire and experiments in style that made Coe's What a Carve-Up so enjoyable in the 1980s. Here, the jokes are more frequent, the characters more rounded (though girls and women remain paper-thin) and the character of Benjamin especially appealing. Benjamin sees his sister traumatized by an IRA bomb, secretly becomes a Christian and finds true love with the beautiful Cicely. The kind of boys' book that will also appeal to girls, The Rotters' Club is a feast of comedy, satire and unexpected tenderness. Review by AMANDA CRAIG (Kirkus UK) What the papers say: "Coe recreates the period with loving accuracy... the sheer intelligent good nature that suffuses his book makes it a pleasure to read" - The Guardian "A book to cherish, a book ro reread, a book to buy all your friends" Independent on Sunday Author's Biography: Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the author of five novels including What a Carve Up! (which won the 1995 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize) and The House of Sleep (which won the Writers' Guild Best Fiction Award for 1997). All five novels are available as Penguin paperbacks. He lives in Earl's Court, London.