Wonder, from a personal, not soley political aspect how things got to where we are in October 2019? Take students from a school who kept in touch over the years. Follow each, wives, girlfriends, children, nieces. Hear what the press is saying. Hear what everyone outside is saying. Push as close to the point of departure as possible.For a terrific reading experience, have all three books in the trilogy in hand and read them one after the other. Read The Rotters' Club, The Closed Circle and then Middle England all in a row. The three together are so much stronger than anyone of the books alone.As a long-time ex-pat, I hesitate to pronounce on a story so fully set in an England that I hardly recognize. But that won’t stop me. I loved the “Rotters Club” characters and am so happy that their travails have ended so satisfactorily, as the England that they and I knew vanishes in the sunset.Wonderful continuation of characters written decades ago in ROTTERS CLUB and bringing them up to date in the confusing time of Brexit. Just a first class book that I was so sorry to read the last page of. There were moments that I could swear I was reading headlines. Funny and frightening.Wonderfully paced narrative. Couldn’t put it down; I disrupted work to finish it. Soothed this expat’s heart; now I more fully understand the roots of Brexit. Loved the characters who are struggling with what life throws at them. Off to buy the previous two. Thanks so much, Mr Coe.The best explanation of Brexit I’ve ever read in fiction, and things which led to it, beside it’s just brilliantly written and fun to read!This is excellent! David Lodge for the 21st century! I became much more interested in Brexit after reading, but also in his other work. Read it!I had to cringe and stop reading a number of time because this is the world we're living in. I never read Coe before. Now I want to go to his other books.This was most disappointing. I liked The Rotter’s Club. I come from Birmingham and was there at the pub bombings so I have always felt a sense of kinship with the characters. But they have developed into middle class bores with a sense of entitlement. They don’t seem to do much in the way of work seemingly able to live very well because they bought houses in London at the right time. Sophie is suspended from her lecturing but manages to begin a tv series and makes friends with the woman who is responsible . How very charming but how very unlikely. The main character manages to get his book on the Booker list. Just ordinary folk then. Brexit looms large and it is obvious where Coe’s sympathies lie. Brexiteers are, naturally, elderly unintelligent and racist. While acknowledging that the government is a bunch of lying morons he won’t admit that those who voted leave may have legitimate concerns and anger that don’t include spitting at people of different races or refusing to recognise their humanity. What is Coe’s answer? Go and live in France in an idyllic mill house,giving writing seminars to people who write in languages you can neither speak nor read. How useful for the rest of us! There are some amusing moments but these don’t compensate for cardboard characters who are basically either repellent or boring or, in the case of the children’s entertainers, redundant and silly. I was expecting something better than this. An exploration of the dynamics of different experiences and ideas and the complexities of modern Britain. Instead there were stereotypical reactions and people from someone who feels a sense of superiority and detachment from the fray.It's an easy read but, unfortunately, feels like an easy write. I can't sense that any great effort went into this Brexit novel as it's completely 'on the nose'. All the big events of the last few years are checked. 2011 riots? Tick. 2012 Olympics? Tick. Murder of Jo Cox? Tick. Terrorist incidents? Tick. Deranged accusations of transphobism? Tick.The peripheral characters are very sketchy and one, a political advisor called Nigel, is downright cartoonish. Oh, and every single old person is a racist, a Leave voter and moans constantly about Political Correctness.It's not without merit. Benjamin's brief moment in the sun when the novel he's been working on all his life is long-listed for the Booker and his subsequent realisation that he has said all he has to say and will never write another, is poignant. The character Charlie, with the gold-digging girlfriend he cannot satisfy by working as a children's entertainer and the quasi-stepdaughter whom he worships has more life than most of the other dramatis personae.But the novel is a major disappointment. I don't regret reading it but I was hoping for so much more.I hadn’t read any of Jonathan Coe‘s novels until about ten days ago. Reading about this new book, and seeing that it was a sequel to two previous novels, I decided to go back to the beginning. Over a span of about four days, I read The Rotter‘s Club and Closed Circle. These were two of the best novels that I have read in many years.I was very pleased to see a continuation of these characters‘ stories. And a continuation it is; while it could be read as a standalone novel, it really depends on the reader‘s awareness of what happened in the previous two books. Once again, I became emotionally invested in these characters and their experiences.It’s a bit strange to read a novel where one of the main characters is Brexit. As a foreigner in the UK, I have found this to be a deeply uncomfortable period. In some ways, Coe overdoes the expository elements about Brexit; it almost seems as if he’s writing a book to be read in 50 years when people have not lived this first hand. But it all makes sense, all of the experiences of the characters to fit into this cataclysmic event, and it ties up rather neatly – perhaps too neatly — at the end. Of course, given the way this novel does end, it is entirely possible that there may be another sequel.After reading the first two books, I was struck by how many similarities there were to Anthony Powell‘s A Dance to the Music of Time. I went to the author’s website and found that this was, in some ways, an influencer, at least on the first two novels.Of the three, I feel that Closed Circle is by far the best, but all three of these novels are excellent and paint a brilliant picture of a group of characters as they age. Bravo to Mr Coe.At the turn of the century I read a book which I thought at the time – and probably still do to be honest – was one of (if not the) best modern novels I’d ever read. ‘The Rotters Club’ by Jonathan Coe had a massive influence on me because I felt it was almost a story of my own teenage years and that of my teenage friends as so many of experiences and feelings depicted mirrored that of my own little world.It was made even more personal for me because, as a proud Midlander, it was refreshing (and sadly unusual) to see this wonderful coming-of-age book was set in and around Birmingham and featured many of the major Midlands events I, and my friends and family knew so well - The Birmingham pub bombings, strikes at British Leyland etc etc.The book centred on the lives, loves and musical awakenings of a group of boys and their families throughout the 70s with a big emphasis on the culture of the period and the emerging political feelings of all involved. Music was also an important backdrop as it showed how punk enriched and changed the lives of some people (as it did for me) while leaving those young characters who were still enjoying meandering prog rock in utter bemusement and bewilderment. It was at times very funny, others moving, genuinely tragic in bursts and so very, very real that it had a massive impact on me as I know it did a lot of other people.Fast forward nearly 20 years and Jonathan Coe has revisited the same characters (for the third and possibly final time) to look at how the years 2010-2018 have touched the lives of this mixed bunch of former school friends now they are stumbling uncertainly into middle age. The Brexit debate and the attitudes that existed before, during and after it are a fascinating and eventually dominant factor of this new book as are the prevailing political shifts but once again it is more of a book about relationships, friendships, love and failed dreams. Yes it reflects the changing face of Britain as a whole and the the Midlands in particular but like all great novels about great events it is about people first and foremost and what fascinating people they are..I can’t recommend this superb book enough and even if you haven’t read the first two in the trilogy I hope you will still be as thoroughly absorbed as I was by a book that is a truly memorable snapshot of a truly memorable period for us all.Thanks for reading and if you have got this far make sure this joyous book is the next thing you read.Loved it.I was looking forward to this, but it is rather banal, with no particularly interesting characters. It is, of course, well researched, but that is very easy, given the recent history involved. The vacuous P.R. man for David Cameron is just a cartoon character, although we have heard many similar suits on Newsnight over the years. I did not see the point of the childrens entertainer's character, and there are several others who are entirely one dimensional. In fact, there is one character in the final scene in France, and I have no idea why she is in the book at all or who she is. Any attempts at humour are clumsy, with the sex in the wardrobe scene one of the least funny I have ever read. I really don't know what Mr Coe was trying for, other than simply saying that Brexit, and the background to Brexit, was a complete bugger's muddle. I think you probably know that already.