Bourneville by Jonathan Coe

Viking, 2022 / Penguin paperbacks, 2023

Why?

This is an author whom I've been meaning to read for some time. The state-of-the-nation aspect appealed, as well as the generational trajectory (following the same family from 1945 to the present day) as it aligns with the living history of my own family.

Enjoyment factor ....

The novel didn't live up to expectations, unfortunately! The conceit is neat, structured around key moments in our national history: VE Day, the Coronation of the late Queen, the World Cup Final, the wedding of Charles and Diana, etc, and ending with the 75th Anniversary of VE Day in the depths of the pandemic.

There was a certain enjoyment in familiarity, having myself had grandparents who lived through (and fought in) the second world war, and parents who were born at that time, with subsequent generations having lived through the same experiences.

However, the characters felt disappointingly wooden, like cardboard cut-outs of people who lived in the respective eras, with a manufactured range of "typical" political and cultural opinions distributed across them for each section. I did consider abandoning ship a few times, but pressed on.

It left me thinking ....

That if Alan Hollinghurst is able to sustain my unwavering attention using a similar episodic, multigenerational format, but over the course of a century and nearly 600 pages (see previous blog on The Stranger's Child), this shorter and more immediately relatable novel should certainly have been able to do so.

There's much to be said about showing rather than telling. Using characters to tell the story of a nation is an attractive idea (history, after all, is nothing but the sum of biographies), but those characters need to be fleshed-out individuals in their own right, not just examples to prove each point.

I probably won't bother with Coe's other novels, though have to admit that I'm still intrigued given his extensive critical acclaim.