Jonathan Coe - Number 11

Rating 4/5

Review:
A very good novel - in the end

Jonathan Coe is a very fine writer with a penetrating eye for social attitudes and trends in Britain.  I enjoyed much of Number 11, although I did think it had flaws.

This is Coe's take on the years since 2000.  Its underlying themes are the shallow belief that everything can be reduced to monetary value, the idea that the selfish amassing and flaunting of personal wealth is the sole purpose life, and the shedding of any sense of responsibility toward others.  The conceit of the title is that this is Coe's eleventh novel.  It is presented in a series of episodes featuring a number of characters who appear and disappear, which very loosely related by the Number 11: in one it's a house number, in others a bus route, the number of storage unit, a table number at a function and so on.  Critically, number 11 Downing Street gets the briefest of mentions very late in the novel, but the effect of financial policy pervades this book, and it's a nice subtle touch to point to it in this way.

Coe writes excellent, readable prose which doesn't draw attention to itself but tells the story very well.  His wit is evident in many places and I both laughed and smiled wrily quite often.  Many of the expected targets are there: social media, the selfie generation, the cruelty and falsity of reality shows, pretentious art prizes, aggressive viciousness on the internet, ignorant and bile-fuelled "commentators", the effects of "austerity" on the poor and needy while bankers and the super-rich are unaffected, and so on.  All are worthy targets for satire but, however deserving, for quite a while it felt like a slightly stale checklist with a sense that a lot of characters were just put there as a vehicle for Coe's next social observation. This made it a little difficult to get into the book as a novel, and it wasn't helped by the characters sometimes talking or thinking in carefully crafted analytical essays rather in the voice of than the ordinary person that they were.

However, later in the book the story and the social exposé became very gripping and  things picked up wonderfully for me around half way through with the chapter on The Winshaw Prize.  This is written as an out-and-out comedy, complete with slightly silly names, and from there on in the whole thing worked excellently – including the final chapter which actually became rather exciting and frightening in places - and I thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the book.  The characters had also become far more recognisably human, rather than something to hang a political point on, and I became involved with them at last.

The message of the book is probably summed up in an exchange between Rachel, an idealistic post-grad, and Freddie who advises the super-rich on how to avoid tax:

"The poorest half of the world has the same amount of money as the richest *eighty-five* people.  …  Doesn't it make you think?"

"It makes me think the poorest half of the world should get its act together."

Jonathan Coe has illustrated the effects of that attitude on our society here with a good deal of flair and wit, and in spite of my reservations about the early chapers I can recommend this novel.