Bournville: From the bestselling author of Middle England

Product Information

Then an 11-year-old growing up in the literal shadow of the Cadbury's factory, and the metaphorical shadow of WW2, we follow Mary as she grows up, finds love and work and has a relatively normal British life. A life full of dreams connections, happiness, the odd regret.

Honorary degrees: DLitt, University of Birmingham (2006); [17] DLitt, University of Wolverhampton (2006); [18] DUniv, Birmingham City University. [19] Few contemporary writers can make a success of the state of the nation novel: Jonathan Coe is one of them * New Statesman * Mary Lamb, the matriarch at the centre of this bittersweet family saga, a PE and music teacher, is modelled on his mother Janet. The rest of the family are fictional, he says, although the youngest son Peter, a musician, is a familiar Coe figure: “passive, slightly depressed men – often failed writers or composers or both – who show a rather uncommitted sexuality”, as the author himself once observed of his protagonists. Structured around seven national occasions, Bournville opens with a prologue at the onset of the pandemic and ends with the distressing circumstances of his mother’s death. He hadn’t set out to include so many royal landmarks – the coronation, the investiture of Prince Charles, the royal wedding, Princess Diana’s funeral – but as he was writing he realised they are often the triggers for moments of national coming together. It is, he says, both his most personal and political novel.Floppy-haired Boris, who popped up in Middle England, is here, in his early days as a reporter in Brussels, already known only by his first name. As Coe reflects drolly in an author’s note: “Whether he’s a fictional character or not remains hard to determine with any certainty.” Fielder, Jez; Alasdair Sandford; Isabel Silva (23 December 2019). "UK election: 'Getting Brexit done is going to take decades' says Jonathan Coe". Euronews . Retrieved 28 November 2021. This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely Big Issue

Retailers:

Bournville is an enjoyable family saga, centred on the memorable Mary - inspired by Jonathan Coe's own mother - whom we first meet in her little village on VE Day. For all the novel's satirical tang and historical sweep, it's at root a tender portrait of apparently simple folk trying to fathom the mystery of their own personalities Spectator With it's overlap with these novels, as well as others by Coe, Bournville is another piece of the large tapestry presenting modern Britain that Coe's work can be seen as, and certainly a solid and entertaining one. A few weeks ago I read and reviewed Ian McEwan‘s most recent novel Lessons. One of the key themes of the novel was how certain major world events affected the main character, a man who was the same age as McEwan, though whose life was very different from McEwan’s. A tender portrayal of the state of the nation through the prism of family relationships * Woman & Home *

I have previously read two of Jonathan Coe’s novels – his 1994 “What A Carve Up” and 2015 part-sequel “Number 11” – both very readable and enjoyable (if rather didactic and over-preaching to the converted) social satires drawing on English farce and (more oddly) spoof horror movies – the first novel in particular also surprisingly formally inventive.Coe's interwoven paeans to the lives of those rooted in the very centre of the UK - The Rotter's Club and Middle England among them - blend comedy, tragedy and social commentary in enjoyably memorable fashion, and his latest, Bournville, is no exception . . . Coe's particular gift is to understand how nostalgia, regret and an apprehension of what the future will bring might make us more, not less, empathetic to the frailties of those around us FT, Best Audiobooks of the Year The other nationality that plays a role is the Welsh. The families visit Wales for a holiday and two of the cousins – Peter Lamb and David Foley – become friendly with Sioned, daughter of the owner of the farm where they are staying. That too ends badly when Sioned shows her bitterness (and that of her family) regarding the English treatment of the Welsh including the Investiture of the Prince of Wales and flooding Welsh villages for a reservoir for water for England. Welsh nationalism will appear again. His heart sank slightly when he heard about Ian McEwan’s new novel Lessons, published in September, which follows a similar timespan and also offsets personal and historical events. “It just shows that we’re very different kinds of writers,” he says now, having read the novel (he considers McEwan to be one of our finest writers in terms of style). Bournville is written with Coe’s mix of gentle nostalgia and astute social observation, and fans will recognise characters from previous novels (nearly all his characters are connected in some way). If it is less comic than usual, that is hardly a surprise.

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 She will have three sons and two of them will have children and THOSE children will have children and, in the meantime, things will inexorably change. Even here in the former colonies, the seven events that shape this novel – VE Day, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, the World Cup Final, the investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales, the wedding of Charles and Diana, Diana’s funeral, and the 75th anniversary of VE Day – spark emotions. Bittersweet as the eponymous bar of plain chocolate, the book ranges over a huge span of time, includes a large cast of characters, yet never flags nor confuses. It manages to squeeze in, among other things, the history of Bournville, European disputes over the labelling over chocolate, Welsh nationalism, the Festival of Britain, the launch of the Austin Metro and tensions over the European Union. As we leaf through the family album, there are touching jolts of recognition. It’s hard not to be stirred by your own memories of the events portrayed and thoughts of your own family. During the next three-quarters of a century, Mary will have children and grandchildren and great-children. She will live through the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the 1966 World Cup final (the last time England won), royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, and Bournville itself will gradually disappear into the sprawl of the growing city of Birmingham.

Jonathan, Coe (8 November 2018). Middle England. [London]. ISBN 9780241309469. OCLC 1065525001. {{ cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher ( link) Coe is clearly interested as much in the extended family as in any individuals and while some individuals in the family play a larger role than others – Mary Lamb and her youngest son Peter in particular- Coe is far more interested in family interaction than Mc Ewan. Two of the families – the Foleys who are part of our main extended family and the Trotters who play a very small role in this book – have appeared in Coe’s previous novels and, indeed, he tells us in the afterword that the Foleys may well appear again in future works. Coe does his ending well enough, but much of it does feel more strained than the easier-flowing other parts of the novel. Coe wrote the sleevenotes "Reflections on The High Llamas" for the 2003 compilation of The High Llamas Retrospective, Rarities and Instrumentals. He has also written lyrics for songs on the albums My Favourite Part of You and The Wonder of It All by Louis Philippe, and Earth to Ether by Theo Travis, for which the vocalist was Richard Sinclair. And the novel has a surprisingly strong ending also with a passage which echoes one from the start and shows the continuity of societal issues – which is a fundamental theme of the novel (and of course proven by the events since the novel was written - the overdue defenestration of Boris, another Royal death and another Royal coronation … and probably another James Bond film but I do not follow movies).

There are a few good chapters, especially those talking about Cadbury's, but I was dismayed to read in the author notes that the death of Mary Lamb in the novel was an accurate account of the passing of Coe's own mother during the Covid pandemic. Honorary Graduates of Birmingham City University". Birmingham City University. Archived from the original on 27 August 2018 . Retrieved 28 January 2015. Now the author was not to know that since his epilogue was written a mere 5 months ago in April 2022 that a) the Queen would have passed away and, b) Boris Johnson would no longer be in power and the UK would be in an even worse state of affairs. The news in the UK is totally saturated by these topics right now - understandably - so perhaps for me personally this was not a good moment to read a novel that featured these two themes so prominently when I am reading a novel to relax and escape from constant discussion and rumination on such topics. If you're a fan of zeitgeist-y reads then maybe this will all work better for you.When Mary and Geoffrey get engaged, Geoffrey still feels some anxiety, knowing: "he would never quite feel sure of her until the vows were spoken and the wedding ring was on her finger", and she does, in fact, have another suitor; this possibility of how everything could have been different in just slightly different circumstances also hangs nicely over the novel. A beautiful, and often very funny, tribute to an underexamined place and also a truly moving story of how a country discovered tolerance' Sathnam Sanghera, bestselling author of Empireland So also, one character, late on, comes to find: "Everything he had assumed [...], all those years ago, was wrong. Everything".)