Bitter Brexit battles seep into timely new novels
MIDDLE ENGLAND HHHH by Jonathan Coe
Viking, £16.99
RICHLY comic and piercingly observant, Middle England is the third book in a loose trilogy which kicked off in 2001 with The Rotters’ Club, a coming-of-age novel – and a modern classic – set in the 1970s.
The Closed Circle, in 2004, took the same cast into the late 1990s and now, 14 years on, Coe picks up the threads from 2010 to the present day with this state-of-the-nation Brexit novel.
The result is at times laughout-loud funny and I thoroughly enjoyed it even though I hadn’t read the first two books.
Coe is an acute observer of social mores and has proved himself particularly adept in chronicling the catastrophe that has been British politics over the last eight years.
Whether you’re a Brexiteer or a Remainer (and Coe is clearly the latter), you can’t dispute the fact that the Brexit referendum has revealed sadly deep divisions within the British nation.
In Middle England these divisions are explored through the lives of Benjamin Trotter, his friends and family. Benjamin has retired, moved to the country and is focused upon his life’s work – a novel set to atonal music – and the care of his irascible widowed father.
His older sister Lois, a librarian in York, is still struggling to come to terms with a tragedy in the 1970s which has all but maimed her life, and one of Coe’s motivations in writing this novel was to develop the siblings’ relationship.
Meanwhile her daughter Sophie, an art historian, is fed up with failed academic romances but believes she has found true love with Ian, a driving instructor. Doug Anderton, Ben’s
schoolfriend, hates Brexit but as a political columnist he finds it the gift that keeps giving.
All these characters are ineluctably drawn into the conflicts which the Referendum and its aftermath both triggered and revealed.
Sophie and Ian’s marriage is threatened by their opposing stances on this key issue while Labour-voting Doug finds romantic happiness with a Remainer Conservative MP.
“People are getting angry, really angry,” Doug tells Ben in 2010 and this underlying anger is a powerful theme within the novel, embodied in several explosive confrontations.
In 2012, as the various characters watch Danny Boyle’s Olympic Games opening ceremony on television, there is a brief moment of cohesion, although what each person takes away from the event is very different.
It is a neat plot device for the characters to air their views, as is the Baltic cruise on which Sophie lectures.
Although Coe paints a warm picture of sustaining male friendship, beautifully fleshing out his main characters, he teeters into characterisation with some of the supporting cast such as Ian’s ghastly reactionary mother Helena.
But overall he balances the serious with the humorous in this very readable tale. VANESSA BERRIDGE
THE DROP HHHH by Mick Herron
John Murray, £9.99
WHEN retired spy Solomon Dortmund sees an envelope being passed from a woman to a man in a cafe in Marylebone he instantly knows he has witnessed a “drop”.
In spook parlance this is the passing of secret information from a spy to their handler.
Solomon relays his suspicions to John Bachelor, who babysits spies put out to pasture, without realising the chain of events he will set in motion.
Bachelor already has enough troubles on his plate.
He is a hair’s breadth from sleeping in his car after his wife divorced him and he lost his pension on an unwise investment.
The last thing he needs is to be ridiculed for passing on a “drop” conjured up in the overactive imagination of an old spook.
So he calls in a favour from analyst Alec Wicinski to run the name of the “handler” Solomon saw, who is known to staff at the café, through the databases of the intelligence services.
However, this simple favour will have dramatic consequences for all involved, leaving MI5’s own “Iron Lady” Diana Taverner struggling to keep the Service on an even keel.
The Drop is a 100-page novella set in the world of Herron’s award-winning Slough House series but it can still be enjoyed as a standalone story.
Herron is a master of subtle wit and satire, intricately weaving an impressive amount of detail into a short story. The Drop is also timely, set against the backdrop of looming Brexit and a changing security situation that could turn services that are currently “friendly” against each other.
For Herron’s fans this is a welcome snack between meals as they eagerly await the sixth novel in the series next year, while new readers can enjoy a taste of why he is rightly touted as one of the best thriller writers in Britain today. JON COATES