Bournville, we learn from Jonathan Coe’s notes at the end of the novel, is the fourth in a planned quintet he’s writing under the general title of Unrest. This book also overlaps with the trilogy that began with The Rotters’ Club and continued with The Closed Circle and the Costa award-winning Middle England. All these interweaving plotlines, all the reappearing names, events and, above all, places give the impression of an author whose work is driven by an almost obsessive need to take new perspectives on the past (and its role in shaping the present), to rehearse and re-rehearse foundation myths both personal and national.
This is also a novel that makes clear the evolution of Coe’s oeuvre, from the experimental fireworks of his early work, through the quiet, slightly bitter satire of his mid-period titles, to the succession of hugely impressive books that he’s produced since 2016. If Brexit has brought us little else of value, it has at least reanimated the career of the arch-Europhile. Bournville, like Middle England, is a state-of-the-nation novel that seeks to respond to a question asked by a German musician early in the book: “This new path you’ve taken in the last few years – why exactly did you choose it? And why did you choose this man, of all people, to lead you down it?”
