Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe is back, chronicling Britain during the Liz Truss Era — presumably this will have to be the first of another long series... And yes, there are lettuce references, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg (sorry!). This is a novel that asks serious questions about the nature and purpose of fiction and digs into how we opened the door to the “selfishness is good” virus of neo-conservatism in the 1980s, represented here by a sinister right-wing think tank centred around a show more Cambridge philosophy don with more than a passing resemblance to Mrs Thatcher’s Svengali Roger Scruton.

But it’s also a deeply playful postmodern literary gymnasium, chockablock with meaningful ambiguity (I didn’t count, but something tells me there are at least seven types here), whose three sections elegantly parody and subvert three important contemporary genres: cozy mystery, dark academia, and auto-fiction, in turn. A literary puzzle gets tangled up with political plots, and there’s a choice of possible murders. Some readers will probably find this deeply irritating, but it’s extremely well done, and I had a lot of fun reading it. If you enjoyed What a carve up, then this is for you. show less

This novel picks up the theme of old British horror films that Jonathan Coe first dealt with in What a Carve-Up, but it's primarily a state-of-England novel, like most of his recent books. At the heart of it seems to be the divide between the rich and poor in 21st century England and the whole ”chav” phenomenon, the contempt that rich people, at least in the newspapers, seem to have for the poor. And, of course, he has fun with this whole idea by introducing a character who turns out to show more be that straw-figure so beloved of angry right-wing columnists, the black lesbian with an artificial leg.

Coe also digs into the way we have in modern society of reducing everything to a monetary equivalent, from the quality-of-life improvement expected from a course of medical treatment to the boost in tourism that an intriguing archeological discovery might bring.

Another theme that runs through the book is the ineffectiveness of political humour. Coe notes repeatedly how making jokes about politicians, or more general satire about the evils of society, has become something which just operates as a mechanism for diffusing our anger — or guilt — and never seems to have any actual effect on the way politics works. This is set against the way right-wing columnists, who are really not so very different from the stand-up comedians, do seem to be able to stir up actual political change with their variety of rant, but Coe doesn’t big very deeply into this distinction.

There's all sorts of other stuff, though. There's an Etonian who's having lessons in arrogance-control in order to get through his Oxford admissions process, there's a professional dog walker who makes more money than some of her rich clients, there’s a billionaire’s-wife who wants to turn her London villa into an underground skyscraper, there’s a policeman who is more interested in publicity than justice and actively seeks out reasons to arrest celebrities. And, as a bonus, we get some giant spiders and a Loch Ness monster. What more could you ask for?

It's a slightly disjointed story, but very engaging and with a lot of resonance for anybody who's got any experience of Britain in the 21st century, which is what Coe is particularly good at. show less

As Britain mourns the Queen and Liz Truss tries to bring the country out of its post-Covid malaise, a Right-Wing think tank is holding a conference in the Cotswolds. There an opponent of the group is murdered. Meanwhile, recent graduate Phyl is contemplating her future and thinks about being a novelist.
It is so hard to describe this book and that is the joy of it. At heart is a polemic against extreme Right-Wing views but it's wrapped up in a murder mystery that is written in three literary show more forms. Except that isn't quite it either! Whatever the truth is doesn't matter, it's just absolute classic Coe. The satire is both sharp and subtle in places - too many instances to mention but I did love the fact that one strand hangs on knowledge of 'Friends' episodes. Very clever and supremely entertaining show less

This is a wonderfully entertaining and easy to read novel which is almost impossible to describe without making it sound forbiddingly complicated, self-referential, and just a bit too clever for its own good. It combines cosy crime, politics, dark academia and autofiction. Some of the story is set during Liz Truss’s disastrous blink-and-you’ll-miss-it 45 day reign as British Prime Minister, but we also head back to Cambridge University in the early years of Thatcherism. Characters from show more Coe’s satire of Thatcherism, What a Carve Up!, are dropped into the narrative, as is Coe himself as hapless Cambridge undergraduate Tommy Cope who later enjoys modest success with his satirical novel Quite the Mash-up. It has a punning title and features a rather fiery novelist called Peter Cockerill who, having decided that telling stories is nothing more than telling lies, endeavours to tell the literal truth about his own life in novel form (shades of the late great B. S. Johnson about whom Coe wrote an excellent biography).

The main engine of the narrative, or perhaps that should be narratives, is provided by cosy crime. Coe observes the conventions of the genre while also gently sending them up. So we get a country house complete with secret passages, an unctuous aristocrat, an eccentric elderly female detective, the obligatory corpse who has obligingly left a cryptic clue, and a gaggle of suspects standing around trying to look innocent. To these ritual elements he adds a sinister right-wing think tank involved in a plot to privatise the National Health Service.

Cosy murder, I must confess, isn’t really my preferred cup of poison, but Coe soon had me not only wanting to know whodunnit but actually caring. Pastiche and metafictional games aside The Proof of my Innocence works splendidly as a thrilling murder mystery. It’s stuffed to the gunnels with satisfying twists and turns and never surrenders all of its many secrets until the very final page. It’s also peppered with deliberately corny jokes - straight out of the seventies sitcoms Coe loves - that are so bad they’re hilarious.

This, however, is Jonathan Coe, sharp-eyed observer of British society, and there is certainly more going on here than is apparent at first glance. It’s a Russian doll of a novel: books within books and stories within stories. Coe sets an interrelated set of short fictions within the context of the all-encompassing fiction that is contemporary politics. The self-enclosed world of cosy crime opens out onto the genuinely terrifying world of post-truth politics. As reality begins to look increasingly unreal and untrustworthy where do we find the factual? Autofiction? Perhaps not. After all, we only have the nonfiction novelist’s word that he or she isn’t making it all up. Coe seems to be suggesting, in this exuberantly inventive and playful example of the storyteller’s art, that it is in the compact between writer and reader called fiction that we might still catch a glimpse of the truth in these mendacious times. show less