Jonathan Coe - The Rotters Club

PENGUIN BOOKS THE ROTTERS CLUB Wonderfully entertaining countless laugh-out-loud moments an
unremittingly enjoyable reading experience Birmingham Post Jonathan Coe is the most excition young British novelist writing
today and The Rotters Club is yet another in an unbroken string
of entrancing achievements Bret Easton EllisConfirms Jonathan Coe as one of our most compelling storytellers
Daily Telegraph , Books of the YearMoving and very funny. A deeply truthful book
Observer , Books of the YearAt once uproariously entertaining and deadly seriousa conscientious
and politically charged reminder of an age quite easily forgotten, yet
not far removed form our own The Times Literary Suplement superior entertainment. Vastly enjoyable New Statesman Coe brilliantly captures all the existential angst of adolescence: its
mixture of dreamy romanticism and bitter rivalry; intellectual curiosity
and bewildered libidos; rebellious posturing and its oh-so-earnest
rhetoric. He is the only writer to possess the wit, vitality and
courage to address the most elusive topic of all the burlesque
tragedies and grotesque comedies of the country in which we live
Daily Express A cracking evocation of the 1970s Daily Telegraph Richly entertaining and Wonderfully achieved. A must read for anyone
who cares about contemporary literature Sunday Telegraph Hooks you from the start a hilarious ride through the whirligig
of the Seventies, and should be devoured in one sitting. Coe has a fine
ear for dialogue and the novel is packed with comic set pieces
A triumph Literary Review A vivid picture of this crooked, exhilaration, hopeful age Coe
evokes the times effortlessly, never putting a foot wrong. A vibrant.
compulsively readable, deeply felt novel with moments of glory
Sunday Herald Does for the 1970s what his higly successful novel What a Carve Up!
did for the 178s Simultaneously satirical, extremely funny, and
literary a writer of fine intelligence and humanity Financial Times A tremendous romp through the bizarre, often very funny culture of
that troubled decade; the clothes, the music, the hair The social
details are described by Coe with an accuracy and love that could make
you doubt his sanity, but never his vrilliance or his sense of humour
A joy to read Spectator Brilliant, funny, apposite, informed and unflaggingly truth-seeking
Evening Standard Coe is a screamingly funny writer at times, but he combines his
humour with pathos and thus gives his characters an astonishing clarity
and depht Scotland on Sunday

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. His most recent novel is The Rain Before It Falls. He is also the author of The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The Dwarves of Death, What a Carve Up! which won the 1995 John Lewellyn Rhys Prize, The House of sleep, Which won The 1998 Prix Medicis Etranger, The Rotters Club, winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and The Closed Circle. His biography of the novelist B.S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, won the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction book of the year. He lives in London With his wife and two children.

The Rotters' Club

JONATHAN COE

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published by Viking 2001
first published in Penguin Books 2002
This edition published 2008

Copyright Jonathan Coe, 2001
lllustration coe, 2001
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, theis book is sold subject
to the condintion that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers
prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in
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condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

978-0-14-191004-8

For Janine, Matilda and Madeline

On a clear, blueblack, starry night, in the city of Berlin, in the year 2003, two young people sat down to dinner. Their names were Sophie and Patrick.

These two people had never met, before today. Sophie was visiting Berlin with her mother, and Patrick was visiting with his father. Sophies mother and Patricks father had once known each other, very slightly, a long time ago. For a short while, Patricks father had even been infatuated with Sophies mother, when they were still at school. But it was twenty-nine years since they had last exchanged any words.

Where do you think theyve gone? Sophie asked.

Clubbing, probably. Checking out the techno places.

Are you serious?

Of course not. My dads never been to a club in his life. The last album he bought was by Barclay James Harvest.

Who?

Exactly.

Sophie and Patrick watched as the vast, brightly lit glass-and-concrete extravagance of the new Reichstag came into view. The restaurant they had chosen, at the top of the Fernsehturm above Alexanderplatz, revolved rather more quickly than either of them had been expecting. Apparently the speed had been doubled since reunification.

How is your mother now? Patrick asked. Has she recovered?

Oh, that was nothing. We went back to the hotel, and she lay down for a while. After that, she was fine. Another couple of hours and we went shopping. Thats when I got this skirt.

It looks great on you.

Anyway, Im glad that it happened, because otherwise your dad wouldnt have recognized her.

I suppose not.

So we wouldnt be sitting here, would we? It must be fate. Or something.

It was an odd situation they had been thrown into. There had seemed to be a spontaneous intimacy between their parents, even though it was so long since they had known each other. They had flung themselves into their reunion with a sort of joyous relief, as if this chance encounter in a Berlin tea-room could somehow erase the intervening decades, heal the pain of their passing. That had left Sophie and Patrick floundering in a different, more awkward kind of intimacy. They had nothing in common, they realized, except their parents histories.

Does your father ever talk much about his schooldays? Sophie asked.

Well, its funny. He never used to. But I think its all been coming back to him, lately. Some of the people he knew back then have resurfaced. For instance, there was a boy called

Harding?

Yes. You know about him?

A little. Id like to know more.

Then Ill tell you. And Dad mentions your uncle sometimes. Your uncle Benjamin.

Ah, yes. They were good friends, werent they?

Best friends, I think.

Did you know they once played in a band together?

No, he never mentioned that.

What about the magazine they used to edit?

No, he never told me about that either.

Ive heard it all from my mother, you see. She has perfect recall of those days.

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