Showing results for "jonathan coe"

**'My comfort read: anything by Jonathan Coe' Bob Mortimer'Coe channels his anger and frustration at the direction his country has taken, as well as his abiding love for it, into prose of enduring beauty' Guardian---**Post-university life doesn’t suit Phyl. Time passes slowly, living with her parents and working a zero-hours contract at Heathrow Airport, while her budding plans of becoming a writer are going nowhere.That is, until family friend Chri...

Jonathan Coe is not a prolific writer of short stories - the seven in this collection make up his entire output (as against ten published novels) - but each one is a jewel of storytelling and characterization. And each could only have come from the pen of the novelist Coe. In fact at least three of the stories here, though self-contained, are part of a larger project to depict the history of a fictional Midlands family, a project which includes the novels The Rain Before It Falls ...

The prize-winning, bestselling author of Middle England turns his gaze to one of cinema's most intriguing figures - famed director of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder.***SOON TO BE A MAJOR FILM***In the summer of 1977, naïve Calista Frangopoulou sets out to venture into the world. On a Greek island that has been turned into a film set, she finds herself working for Billy Wilder, about whom she knows almost n...

The House of Sleep - Jonathan Coe's comic tale of love and obsessionSarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams so vivid she mistakes them for real events; Robert has his life changed for ever by the misunderstandings arising from her condition; Terry, the insomniac, spends his wakeful nights fuelling his obsession with movies; and the increasingly unstable Dr Gregory Dudden sees sleep as a life-shortening disease which must be eradicated. . .A group of students sharing ...

A wickedly funny take on life under the Thatcher government by the prize-winning author of Bournvlile.It is the 1980s and the Winshaw family are getting richer and crueller by the year:Newspaper-columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it isn't. Henry's turning hospitals into car parks. Roddy's selling art in return for sex. Down on the farm Dorothy's squeezing every last pound from her livestock. Thomas is making a killing on the stock ...

Expo 58 - Good-looking girls and sinister spies: a naive Englishman at loose in Europe in Jonathan Coe's brilliant comic novelLondon, 1958: unassuming civil servant Thomas Foley is plucked from his desk at the Central Office of Information and sent on a six-month trip to Brussels. His task: to keep an eye on The Brittania, a brand new pub which will form the heart of the British presence at Expo 58 - the biggest World's Fair of the century, and the first t...

A STUNNING NOVEL OF CLASSICAL MUSIC, FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND NATIONHOOD FROM THE AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE PROOF OF MY INNOCENCE, BOURNVILLE AND MIDDLE ENGLAND'I was completely engrossed by the fictional reconstruction of the friendship between these two very different composers' Clare Chambers, author of SMALL PLEASURES‘A highly satisfying, wise and humane read’ Joanna Miller, bestselling author of...

'Terrific. An incisive portrait of Britain at the turn of the century' SPECTATOR'Coe's finest achievement since What a Carve up!' TIME OUT'Popular fiction at its best' DAILY MAILDiscover bestselling author Jonathan Coe's hilarious sequel to The Rotters' Club!It's the end of the century and Benjamin Trotter and friends are all grown up.Life is a cea...

'A wickedly funny, clever, but also tender and lyrical novel about Britain and Britishness and what we have become' RACHEL JOYCEIn Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and t...

WINNER OF THE EVERYMAN WODEHOUSE PRIZE__________Birmingham, England, c. 1973: industrial strikes, bad pop music, first love, corrosive class warfare, detention, IRA bombings.Four friends: a class clown who stoops very low for a laugh; a confused artist enthralled by rock; an earnest radical with socialist leanings; and a quiet dreamer obsessed with poetry, God, and the prettiest girl in school.Unforgettably funny and painfully honest,...

The Rain Before it Falls - Jonathan Coe's heartbreaking novel of family secretsDeeply moving and compelling, The Rain Before it Falls is the story of three generations of one family riven by tragedy. When Rosamund, a reluctant bearer of family secrets, dies suddenly, a mystery is left for her niece Gill to unravel. Some photograph albums and tapes point towards a blind girl named Imogen whom no one has seen in twenty years. The search for Imogen and the truth of h...

WINNER OF THE THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2019**'**The book everyone is talking about' The Times'A comedy for our times' Guardian__________________The country is changing and, up and down the land, cracks are appearing - within families and between generations.In the Midlands Benjamin Trotter is trying to help his aged father navigate a Britain that seems to have forgotten he exists, whils...