Middle-class view of Brexit bungle
As we watch the slow train crash that is Brexit continue to unfold in the United Kingdom, Jonathan Coe's Middle England is timely. For those of us who are already Coe fans, and have read The Rotter's Club and The Closed Circle, Middle England returns us to those worlds.
Rotter's Club was set among a group of school friends in 1970s Birmingham and The Closed Circle in late 1990s Britain. In Middle England, we see the events leading up to the controversial Brexit vote from 2010 and beyond through the eyes of some of the favourite Rotter's Club characters, Benjamin Trotter and sister Lois, their father, Colin, and journalist Doug Anderton, with a lesser presence of Philip Chase and others.
You don't have to have read Coe's other two books in this loose trilogy; Middle England stands on its own. The old school friends and their lives are entertaining on any level, judgmental about each other as they muddle through middle age, careers and flawed marriages. We delve into the lives of their grown-up and teen children and watch the characters cope with dying parents relying heavily on a support network. It is through these minor and major characters that we see a variety of viewpoints on people's attitudes toward immigrants and what being a European Union member has meant for the UK.
The conversations between political columnist Doug Anderton and a Tory PR man are the most on point for explaining the thinking of former Prime Minister David Cameron in offering the European referendum but the heart and soul of the book is on Ben Trotter and family.
If you are expecting every nuance of the Brexit situation to be thrashed out in this book, you'll be disappointed. This is mainly a middle-class view (it is after all called Middle England) and is, at times, just exasperated or bewildered, other times plain angry, about the Brexit situation.
In the lives of these characters, one criticism might be that they are fairly well upholstered to weather the Brexit storm; they have options to react to the situation.
But I am not complaining, I'll always take the opportunity to revisit these characters and see what is going on in their lives. It is oddly comforting to have their take on the whole giant stinking mess.