People think they like reading Jonathan Coe's novels for any number of reasons. For their satirical sharpness, for instance: What a Carve Up! (1994) - the carve-up in question involving agriculture, politics and the media - seemed to express exactly what people felt about greed, corruption and class entitlement in the 1980s. Historians of their own lifetimes admired the thickly detailed but not soppily nostalgic way Coe defined the 1970s in The Rotters' Club (2001): the Longbridge factory, the IRA, the NME, grammar schools, the Zep. Pleasing both decade-spotters and appreciaters of character, The Closed Circle (2004) took the memorable personnel of the previous novel and cast them forward into the New Labour Noughties, where they muddled along in the same old ways but with better haircuts and a more complicated attitude to relationships. Satire, historical precision, rounded operatic characters, bread and circuses: what more could a reader want?

LRB 18 October 2007 | PDF Download