Finishing The Rotters’ Club and finding ‘there will be a sequel’ posted at the back was a bit of good news. As was finding that sequel on my doormat. And here’s more good news: The Closed Circle is terrific.
Last seen on election night in 1979, the characters from The Rotters’ Club are now pushing 40 and bracing themselves for the new century. Coe manages to fill us in on the intervening 20 years with the minimum of fuss, and soon Benjamin Trotter, his brother Paul, Claire Newman (sister of the vanished Miriam), Doug Anderton and Philip Chase are up and running again. The key events of the first novel are footholds for the second, and Coe creates an incisive portrait of Britain at the turn of the century, with the private shenanigans of these characters set against the turn of real events: Millennium Eve, the threatened closure of the Longbridge car factory, 11 September, war with Iraq, and even Nigella Lawson licking her fingers on TV.
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