Coming of Age in Birmingham, England

In The Rotters’ Club, Jonathan Coe presents a vivid and telling portrait of Birmingham, England in the 1970s. Focusing primarily on the adolescent Benjamin Trotter, whom his schoolmates jokingly call Bent Rotter—from the British slang for homosexual—the book tackles the standard issues of English high school, such as dealings with the opposite sex, parents, bullies, peers and, of course, the tribulations of wearing a uniform. But it also breaches the deeper problems of labor relations and unions, race relations, music, extra-marital affairs, the aftermath of World War II, religion, meaningless sex and the conflict between Britain and Ireland. Remarkably, the book also manages to be incredibly funny for much of the time.

The story is told in the form of a flashback, as discussed in Berlin in 2003 by the children of two of the main characters, who, by happenstance, bump into one another while they are both vacationing in the same spot. Over the course of the novel, the plot reveals itself in many different ways: it changes narrators, follows different characters, and even appears in the form of issues of The Bill Board, Ben’s school newspaper.

This method effectively gives the reader a full, three-dimensional view of the plot, characters and historical context. Nonetheless, it can be confusing, particularly in the beginning when one does not yet have a comprehensive grasp of who all the characters are. Additionally, although the flashback from Berlin in 2003 helps to set the scene and ties in rather well with some of the obscure details that appear in the bulk of the novel, the departure from and return to the present day serve as rather weak bookends for what is a very self-contained story. The exploits of Ben and his friends provide a satisfying end to the novel, making the return to Berlin awkward, clumsy and a little cliche.

Despite this one weakness, The Rotters’ Club is a fun and informative read, capable of both making the reader laugh and of delivering profound statements. In many instances, the novel serves as a light satire of British institutions, gently poking fun at their interesting idiosyncrasies. A particularly funny example of this is a classroom scene in which a student asks the teacher if a poet whom the class is studying is gay. After berating the student, accusing him of having a “grubby and ultimately rather banal little mind” and insisting that “the artistic temperament has no gender,” the teacher undermines his own efforts to evade the question when he immediately directs another student to read aloud one of the aforementioned poet’s works, entitled “The sweat of the young working boy stiffens my resolve.”

In another instance, a discussion between Ben and his classmate Sean Harding reveals a great insight into British culture. When listening to a modern interpretation of an old English folk song, Ben and Sean identify its melancholy as quintessentially English. “The English are a very violent people,” Sean says. “People don’t realize it, but we are. We repent afterwards, which is why we are so melancholy. But first of all we do whatever has to be done.”

In this manner, Harding very often serves as the voice of the novel, writing topically satirical letters to The Bill Board and playing bizarre, but telling, pranks on his classmates and the school itself. The novel presents him as almost omnipotent; none of his peers or teachers can understand him or his motives, but, to him, everything is clear.

The Rotters’ Club, in its own way, faithfully represents the violence and melancholy inherent in English culture in the 1970s—but does so with a light heart and a sardonic wit, also characteristic of the English. In the end, the reader comes away with a sense of perseverance through a life of dissatisfaction. None of the characters are miserable, nor are any of them truly content. Even in the end, when they have accomplished their goals, they cannot achieve happiness simply due to the fact that unhappiness surrounds them. Nonetheless, the melancholy reads sweetly; the characters push on and live their lives with good-humored cynicism and sarcasm.

books

The Rotters’ Club

By Jonathan Coe

Knopf

432 pp., $24.95