Jonathan Coe’s 14th novel opens with a snapshot of recent history that will stir fresh and uncomfortable memories. As the Covid pandemic is descending on Europe in early 2020, thirtysomething Lorna, a struggling jazz musician, is on tour in Austria and Germany. Lorna’s exhilaration at gigging overseas for the first time is tempered by a growing sense that the world is menaced by something extraordinary. It is both ominous and comic. Arriving in Vienna, Lorna can barely squeeze into her host’s car beside the stockpiled toilet rolls. For the reader, there’s an additional and more worrying dramatic irony: we can see that Lorna’s overweight musical partner, Mark, will be particularly vulnerable to the virus.
In Vienna, Lorna and Mark are taken to dinner by Ludwig, the owner of a small independent record label. A jazz fan and passionate anglophile, Ludwig is struggling to figure out what has happened to a nation he once admired for its tolerance, humour and self-awareness. “And now this same generation is doing … what? Voting for Brexit and for Boris Johnson? What happened to them? … What’s going on?”
