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Jonathan Coe

Autor(a) de What a Carve Up!

33+ Works 12,200 Membros 363 Críticas 74 Favorited

About the Author

Jonathan Coe is one of Britain's finest contemporary writers

Séries

Obras por Jonathan Coe

What a Carve Up! (1994) 2,322 exemplares
The Rotters' Club (2001) 2,055 exemplares
The House of Sleep (1997) 1,582 exemplares
The Closed Circle (2004) 1,151 exemplares
The Rain Before it Falls (2007) 1,073 exemplares
Middle England (2018) 641 exemplares
Expo 58 (2013) 381 exemplares
The Dwarves of Death (1990) 365 exemplares
Number 11 (2015) 343 exemplares
A Touch of Love (1989) 305 exemplares
The Accidental Woman (1987) 297 exemplares
Mr Wilder and Me (2020) 232 exemplares
Bournville (2022) 214 exemplares

Associated Works

A Heart So White (1992) — Introdução, algumas edições1,949 exemplares
The Unfortunates (1969) — Introdução, algumas edições404 exemplares
Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame (2003) — Contribuidor — 280 exemplares
First Folio: A Little Book of Folio Forewords (2008) — Contribuidor — 179 exemplares
Ox-Tales: Earth (2009) — Contribuidor — 85 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

Somehow this book only partially captivated me. I found it exciting how the different social classes were described from the perspective of people who are not so favoured but who have great values and dreams. Various topics are touched on, such as the decadent lives of the super-rich who don't care how the rest of the population is doing. Obsession that can lead to death. The food bank and how the people who need it are ashamed that they have to go there to survive. How the participants in the jungle camp are treated. Honestly, I watched this programme once and found it very repulsive. Well, I can't do anything with so-called celebrities anyway. On the other hand, I found it interesting how a simple policeman tries to solve a case and even surprises Scotland Yard in the process. Then there was something paranormal at the beginning and end, which didn't interest me much. And then there was the friendship between Alison and Rachel, who grow closer and separate again and again in the course of the story.
Sometimes it was written very humorously, which made the whole thing worth reading.
… (mais)
½
 
Assinalado
Ameise1 | 16 outras críticas | Feb 21, 2024 |
Coe’s breakthrough novel, from 1994. A satire of the capitalist feeding-frenzy of the Thatcher era, built around plot devices that do affectionate homage to the conventions of mid-20th-century British cinema. The hapless writer Michael Owen, author of two forgotten novels, has been commissioned — chosen at random, as far as he knows — to write a book about the appalling Winshaw family, who have been making a fortune out of unethical business practices from the good old days of the North Atlantic slave trade right through to arms-to-Iraq.

There are a lot of good jokes in the book, but it felt over-long, and the satire is stretched rather too thin by Coe’s need to cover everything from privatisation and NHS asset-stripping to cynical tabloid journalism, merchant-banking (in both senses), the Brit-art industry, unscrupulous arms-dealing and the barbarity of the agri-food industry. Also, the nature of the book requires the Winshaws to be one-dimensional pantomime villains, and that rather undermines the message about how nasty the consequences of their activities are. The deliberately hackneyed and implausible débâcle in the final chapters is handled very nicely, however, but it is foreshadowed so far ahead that it feels as though we have to wait much too long to get to it.

It’s still worth reading this thirty years on, but Coe has grown up a lot as a writer since then, so it will be at least a slight disappointment if you know his more recent work.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
thorold | 52 outras críticas | Feb 19, 2024 |
This novel picks up the theme of old British horror films that Jonathan Coe first dealt with in What a Carve-Up, but it's primarily a state-of-England novel, like most of his recent books. At the heart of it seems to be the divide between the rich and poor in 21st century England and the whole ”chav” phenomenon, the contempt that rich people, at least in the newspapers, seem to have for the poor. And, of course, he has fun with this whole idea by introducing a character who turns out to be that straw-figure so beloved of angry right-wing columnists, the black lesbian with an artificial leg.

Coe also digs into the way we have in modern society of reducing everything to a monetary equivalent, from the quality-of-life improvement expected from a course of medical treatment to the boost in tourism that an intriguing archeological discovery might bring.

Another theme that runs through the book is the ineffectiveness of political humour. Coe notes repeatedly how making jokes about politicians, or more general satire about the evils of society, has become something which just operates as a mechanism for diffusing our anger — or guilt — and never seems to have any actual effect on the way politics works. This is set against the way right-wing columnists, who are really not so very different from the stand-up comedians, do seem to be able to stir up actual political change with their variety of rant, but Coe doesn’t big very deeply into this distinction.

There's all sorts of other stuff, though. There's an Etonian who's having lessons in arrogance-control in order to get through his Oxford admissions process, there's a professional dog walker who makes more money than some of her rich clients, there’s a billionaire’s-wife who wants to turn her London villa into an underground skyscraper, there’s a policeman who is more interested in publicity than justice and actively seeks out reasons to arrest celebrities. And, as a bonus, we get some giant spiders and a Loch Ness monster. What more could you ask for?

It's a slightly disjointed story, but very engaging and with a lot of resonance for anybody who's got any experience of Britain in the 21st century, which is what Coe is particularly good at.
… (mais)
½
2 vote
Assinalado
thorold | 16 outras críticas | Feb 5, 2024 |
Excellent. Léger, marrant, touchant
 
Assinalado
dominiquev | 8 outras críticas | Oct 31, 2023 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
33
Also by
6
Membros
12,200
Popularidade
#1,923
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
363
ISBN
467
Línguas
18
Marcado como favorito
74

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