This novel is perhaps even more explicitly a social examination of the state of the nation but is more straightforward read and without the farcical or spoof elements which made those novels more striking. Ma quanto è bello scoprire un autore di cui non si è mai letto nulla e rendersi conto di avere decine di libri da recuperare? To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. At times it feels like the narrative is more about the historical event, with the family fitting around it and reacting to the events.

I especially enjoyed the description of the European market versus Cadbury chocolate, lots of humour in this book. As somebody of Coe’s age both the period covered (1945-2000) and therefore his perspective on events resonated throughout.Ma dov'è finito 'quel' Coe che decenni fa mi fece innamorare della banda dei brocchi o della casa del sonno? At a meeting between the German and English branches of the family, an argument develops about whether British or German chocolate is better.

The James Bond reference reflects one of the books key premises - that the British are patriotic in a way which is simultaneously backward looking and jingoistic and yet also self-deprecating. It seemed to hold out a different model of capitalism to the one that came to dominate Britain, a vision of “industry and nature existing in harmony, symbiotic, co-dependent”. The sections deal with her/their thoughts and feelings on each occasion, the relationships within the family and how those develop as they grow up, change, have families of their own (or not), and their reminiscences about the past and their lives. I've enjoyed Jonathan Coe's comic novels for two decades, but white this was perfectly readable, it is not one of my favorites. Perhaps the least predictable choice of event (in fact only unpredictable one) was Charles’s investiture and this did lead to some of the more interesting scenes – a childhood realisation of English-Welsh tensions and even a little twist relating to undercover attempts to dissuade Welsh nationalist activists from direct action.This book also overlaps with the trilogy that began with The Rotter s’ Club and continued with The Closed Circleand the Costa award-winning Middle England. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave. Photograph: Quique García/EPA View image in fullscreen ‘Prose of enduring beauty’: Jonathan Coe in Barcelona, February 2022. So overall, this story is a celebration of the UK, a reminiscence of our country and our people, and a reminder of how we have changed as a nation; it is also a family’s story: their loves, arguments, successes, failures, regrets, ambitions and achievements. 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.

Despite the similarities between the lives of the characters in this book and my own family, I felt no connection or resonances. Just as he did in his Middle England trilogy, Coe here has given so much space to describing events of the period in question that it often reads as much like a short history of modern Britain as a novel.Good concept and well-written, but muddled and tedious in plot, overly biased/blatant in approach, and lazy in the characterisation of too many characters who are only shades different from each other, with very few exceptions. We have the King’s speech on VE Day; the next time we visit the family in Bournville is for the coronation in 1953. He is the recipient of many prizes and awards, including both Costa Novel of the Year and Prix du Livre Européen.