Showing results by author "Jonathan Coe" in All Categories

Gulliver is a travel-hungry and adventurous ship's doctor who has the odd misfortune of being ship-wrecked four times in as many voyages. Gulliver finds himself a giant among tiny humans in Lilliput; a tiny human among giants in Brobdignag; on the flying island of Laputa, with its most impractical intellectuals; and finally in the land of the Houyhnhnms, talking horses who think precious little of human ‘Yahoos’.

When a family celebrates the prize-giving day at their daughter’s secondary school, thoughts turn to their own childhoods. The father remembers his living room piano recital, recorded on a well-worn cassette tape. The mother remembers her own father’s war tragedy. As the father searches for the physical reminder of his past and the mother longs to forget her own, they confront the breakdown of their marriage in the present.

Jonathan Coe's new novel is set in the 1970s against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks, and growing racial tension. A group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world.

A Radio 4 Book Club Selection.
Newspaper columnist Hilary gets thousands for telling it like it is; Henry's turning hospitals into carparks; 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 exchange; and Mark is selling arms to dictators.