Tackling a novel written by an Englishman about England today, the last thing you expect is a stunning 100% recognition effect. Nevertheless, Jonathan Coe's "Middle England" (the end of the trilogy begun by the novels "The Rotters Club" and "The Circle Is Closed") paradoxically gives the impression of a mirror in which the Russian reader has the opportunity in all - including the most unsightly - details to consider the very itself and the surrounding area.
Jonathan Coe, born 19 August 1961 in Birmingham, is a British novelist and writer. His work usually has an underlying preoccupation with political issues, although this serious engagement is often expressed comically in the form of satire. For example, What a Carve Up! reworks the plot of an old 1960s spoof horror film of the same name, in the light of the 'carve up' of the UK's resources which some felt was carried out by Margaret Thatcher's right wing Conservative governments of the 1980s. Coe studied at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge, before teaching at the University of Warwick where he completed a PhD in English Literature. In July 2006 he was given an honorary degree by The University of Birmingham.
Middle England kicks off in 2010, when a coalition government came to power in Britain for the first time since Winston Churchill, and ends in 2018, but the narrative culminates in 2016, the year when the British voted for Brexit. , thereby plunging their country into uncertainty and chaos. Either descending to the microlevel and fixing the slightest movements of an individual human soul, then taking off into the skies and from there overlooking the broadest socio-political landscape, Coe paints a panorama of English life in all its touching fragility and tragic absurdity.
Those who have read the previous novels of the cycle will remember their heroes, former students of the King Williams School of Birmingham: the frustrated writer Benjamin, his sister Lois, friends - journalist Doug and publisher Philip - and many others. However, in order to follow the ups and downs of their lives - everyday, not too dramatic and, probably, because of this, they are so understandable - acquaintance with the "Rakaliy Club" and "The Circle is Closed" is not required.
Benjamin, who left his wife and himself abandoned by his mistress, settles in a rebuilt village mill, where, in pleasant seclusion, he finishes his Cyclopean novel. A convinced "leftist" Doug divorces his aristocratic wife, and - to his own amazement - has an affair with Gail, a Tory MP. Doug's daughter, 16-year-old Coriander, heiress of a huge fortune and granddaughter of the peer of England, sparing herself and others, fights for the abstract ideals of equality and goodness.
Benjamin's niece Sophie, a young intellectual, a supporter of liberal freedoms, marries an honest and simple guy of conservative views (needless to say, how difficult it is for them together), publishes a monograph on art history and gets a teaching position at a prestigious university. However, her brilliant academic career collapses overnight due to the ridiculous accusation of transphobia: "I see, is it difficult for you to decide?" - she says to a transgender girl who cannot choose the date of an individual consultation - and immediately becomes the target of public harassment.
Dozens of small human lives merge into the common full-flowing channel of modern English history, and in the background disintegration, mutual misunderstanding, social apathy and polarization of everyone and everything literally out of the blue are growing in an alarming stormy background. The only exciting, but alas, very brief moment of unity is the opening of the Olympic Games, forcing the British to remember for a few hours where, to use the words of Coriander, "awesome country they come from," and imbued with collective values. But after this, the processes of the disintegration of bonds and group identities are accelerating, and ahead of a symbolic line looms the watershed line - "Brexit".
The opening of the Olympics as the last moment of a sweet national amalgamation on the eve of a long and painful discord is not the only thing that makes "Middle England" similar to the realities of Russian life. The very intonation of Jonathan Coe, when talking about Great Britain, constantly balancing on the brink of irritation (it seems, especially the author is not satisfied with the English climate) and tender tenderness, bilious pride and shame, hostility to the ruling elite and a completely reflective absence of his own constructive program, is very reminiscent of the Russian manner of speaking and think about your home country. Even the fact that Coe sees the only antidote to disunity in direct horizontal ties that bridging ideological rifts (Sophie loves her husband, and Doug loves her Tory friend, despite the difference in views), is amazingly consonant with our methods of resisting total decay.
In a word, despite the purely British realities, "Middle England" by Jonathan Coe is a surprisingly Russian novel in spirit and ideas. With the amendment, perhaps, to the fact that in Russia there is no such novel - humane, sad, acutely relevant and at the same time consoling and non-judgmental - so far and is not expected.
This article was sponsored by Rahul Jain
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