Middle England by Jonathan Coe Review

First off, Middle England is the third book in Jonathan Coe’s Rotter’s Club series but I’ve not read either The Rotter’s Club or The Closed Circle and you don’t need to either if you’re thinking of picking this one up; it works fine as a standalone piece but maybe if you’ve read the previous two books you might get more out of it because you’ll know the characters better?

Anyway, Middle England is a fantastic novel about the Brexit referendum with events starting in 2010, leading up to the decisive moment, and the immediate aftermath. There’s a Dickensian cast of characters whose lives we follow throughout the years.

Benjamin is in his fifties, divorced, and struggling to complete his first novel that’s become a sprawling mess; his niece Sophie has to navigate the ultra-liberal culture of modern universities while seeing the opposite attitudes in her husband Ian’s elderly mother Helena, whose racism towards her Lithuanian housekeeper is barely disguised; Doug is a political reporter in a failing marriage, looking into the people driving this anti-European agenda while his increasingly angry teenage daughter Coriander becomes a social justice warrior; those are the main ones but there’s plenty of other great characters here too.

I loved Doug’s meetings with the smug, cocky young Conservative deputy assistant director of communications (job titles these days!), Nigel, which were really fun and had some great dialogue that could’ve come straight out of The Thick of It. The pretentious literary author Lionel Hampshire was amusing, as was the subplot about the two warring children’s entertainers (a swipe at the two main political parties?).

There’s lots of surprising little gems of scenes sprinkled throughout. The romance that never was between Sophie and Adam in Marseilles was unexpectedly moving and the description of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony was brilliant. And I really enjoyed how Benjamin’s story played out, particularly when a journalist from one of the national papers interviews him and the subsequent article that’s written about him.

I didn’t love all of it - the stuff about Benjamin’s ailing dad Colin was dull and predictable. Coe is definitely a liberal and, though he’s not completely blinkered as to be unaware of opposing arguments, the ending was definitely idyllic to the point of fantasy and very sentimental. I’m not totally convinced that Sophie would’ve been quite so successful with such a niche academic background but then the world of academia is largely unknown to me so, who knows, maybe it’s accurate?

And, while Coe doesn’t provide any fresh insight into why Brexit happened, he does encapsulate a lot of the arguments for and against leaving the EU succinctly and, more importantly, presents them in an entertaining and well-written story. Even if you’re bored of hearing about Brexit (and who isn’t at this point?), Middle England is still a terrific read - one of Jonathan Coe’s best.