The Closed Circle
Jonathan Coe Viking, 433pp, £17.99
ISBN 0670892548
A sequel to a recently successful book might seem an easy option for a novelist: two of the hardest jobs in writing - creating characters and building the reader's interest - are already at least half-done. Yet the fascination of Jonathan Coe's follow-up to his 2001 comedy The Rotters' Club lies in watching him negotiate a series of technical challenges that didn't arise in the original. First, there is the problem of factual detail. The Rotters' Club was set in the 1970s, a period distant enough (and weird enough) for its recreation to become a form of surprising cultural archaeology. However, in reuniting the Brum school chums of The Rotters' Club - arty Ben Trotter, shy Philip Chase, bolshie Doug Anderton - Coe surrenders the advantage that the depth of his research gave him over the length of our memories. Covering the years 1999 to 2003, The Closed Circle deals with events recent enough for there to be no shock of nostalgia. As stories of road rage, the millennium bug, cattle-burning, 9/11 and war in Iraq unfurl, we react only with nods of recognition.
It is true that even a short passage of time can make it possible to see patterns and connections not apparent at the time (think of colour-supplement "review of the year" features). Yet you constantly sense Coe worrying about whether or not to nudge us. Sometimes the narrative voice mimics that of a documentary anchorman: "Responsibility for the railways was going to be handed over to Railtrack - a privately run company - rather than to an independent and publicly accountable body as many critics had been demanding." Elsewhere, our host loosens his tie and starts playing games of guess-who, as when one character watches an unnamed female telly chef "licking traces of butter and sauce off her fingers in a manner . . . so explicitly suggestive of oral sex that he found himself getting an erection".
It is unclear why Coe finds it so hard to be explicit about Nigella, or why a satirical television quiz show on which the rising Labour MP Paul Trotter appears is likewise fictionally pixelated to feature "wacky flights of fancy invented by his team captain (a popular TV comedian) or the cynical point-scoring of his opposite number (the smart-arsed editor of a satirical magazine)". Perhaps the reason for this teasing is that, in dealing with such recent history, Coe fears that he hasn't got news for us. Yet the approach is inconsistent. Merton and Hislop go unnamed; Peter Mandelson and others are identified. Coe's coyness is merely irritating now, but it could become seriously confusing when the novel is read in a few years' time.
Another problem that Coe faces is fam-iliar to all sequel-writers: how to keep new readers up to speed without slowing things down for those who read the opener. His solution is to interpolate the narrative with occasional news flashbacks ("his aunt who had vanished without trace ten years before he was born") and to include a three-page synopsis of the earlier novel at the end.
When not busy surmounting these obstacles, Coe seems relieved to be able to show off familiar skills. His previous work has established him as a master of acute social commentary and well-organised comedy. There are scenes in this book - such as the one where a new Labour MP misunderstands a question from the local newspaper - which easily equal the well-plotted farce of his signature novel, What a Carve Up!. Considerable enjoyment is also to be had from the career choices Coe makes for his characters: Doug, the Longbridge shop steward's son, feels absolutely right portrayed as a newspaper columnist who is shocked to be offered the job he most despises on the paper.
Coe has already published an unexpected and unusual book this year: a biography of the avant-garde novelist B S Johnson. The Closed Circle feels like a return to more conventional territory. My guess is that it will read much better when the events it describes have receded; when, as Doug the columnist might put it, the 2000s have become the new 1970s.
Mark Lawson presents BBC Radio 4's Front Row
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