whatcathyread

June 2016. Hubby and I dutifully cast our votes in a once-in-a-lifetime referendum offering a simple, binary choice: Leave or Remain. We knew we were going to vote different ways and our votes would cancel out. In effect, we might as well not have bothered – but we both agree that voting is important.

I still remember where I was when the result came through: in a van in a field at Glastonbury festival. As it turned out, our little household was a microcosm of the whole country, which was also split down the middle (almost) voting 52% / 48%.

Then everything went a bit mad. There were reports of ‘foreigners’ being singled out on buses, in supermarkets and on the street, and told to leave the country immediately. There were pro-EU demonstrations and a petition for a new referendum. There was a surge of applications for Irish passports. Exit negotiations rumbled on for years; two Prime Ministers crashed and burned. Eight years on, neither side seems happy and I generally steer clear of the “B” word – Brexit, I mean.

Jonathan Coe, on the other hand, decided to write a novel about it.

The Brexit referendum and subsequent fall-out is an ambitious subject for a normal-length novel (400 pages in my Penguin edition). Coe, though, is both a master storyteller and a master satirist. Middle England is funny (sometimes laugh-out-loud funny) without being trivial, and intelligent without being preachy. Covering over eight years from April 2010 to September 2018, Coe explores the fault-lines – in families, in relationships, in society – leading up that watershed day in June 2016 when we learned how divided Britain is and the way we can heal the cracks.  The ending offers hope: but I can’t say much more or I’d be giving away the plot!

Middle England won the Costa novel award in 2019.

Rating: ** Worth reading.

PS In Middle England, Coe resurrects characters from his earlier duo of novels, The Rotter’s Club and The Closed Circle. Middle England stands alone, so you can read it without needing to read the others, but to whet your appetite, next month Hubby will be doing a guest post about The Rotter’s Club. You might also be interested in an earlier post about another of Coe’s books, Mr Wilder and Me.