The Rotter's Club

The Rotter's Club
Jonathan Coe
(2001)
catagories: fiction | C21st

I'm never really sure how to tag a book like this. Coe uses a framing device of the story being told not by two of the protagonists reminising over shared experiences but two of their descendents, trying to imagine life in the world before they were born: the modern nostalgia not for real memories but for the idea of them. Yet the book is truly nostalgic in recalling not the rosy idealised past but the real brown and orange, mushrooms-as-exotic, 1970s. Despite the framing device, the narrative is left open but with the promise of a follow-up, The Closed Circle. I was assuming this was a little pomo joke - a promise of closure for those who require it - until I checked and it turns out the book does exist. I find that vaguely disappointing.