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The Rotters' Club
The Rotters' Club
Jan 30, 2026 8:33 AM

Author:Jonathan Coe,Nicholas Burns

The Rotters' Club

Brought to you by Penguin.

Unforgettably funny and painfully honest, Jonathan Coe's tale of Benjamin Trotter and his friends' coming of age during the 1970s is a heartfelt celebration of the joys and agonies of growing up.

Featuring, among other things, IRA bombs, prog rock, punk rock, bad poetry, first love, love on the side, prefects, detention, a few bottles of Blue Nun, lots of brown wallpaper, industrial strife, and divine intervention in the form of a pair of swimming trunks.

Set against the backdrop of the decade's class struggles, tragic and riotous by turns, packed with thwarted romance and furtive sex, The Rotters' Club is for anyone who ever experienced adolescence the hard way.

Reviews

One of those sweeping, ambitious yet hugely readable, moving and richly comic novels that you find all too rarely in English fiction ... a masterpiece

—— Daily Telegraph

Very funny ... a compulsive and gripping read. Coe has achieved that rare feat: a novel stuffed with characters you really care for

—— The Times

A book to cherish, a book to reread, a book to buy for all your friends

—— Independent on Sunday

Gorgeous. . . The Things We Left Unsaid is about how we are always searching for who we are and trying to find out the truth of the past,’

—— Frost magazine (blog)

This book is incredibly special… I cared so deeply for all of the characters.

—— Gaby Roslin

A radiant novel.

—— Sheer Luxe

Moving back and forth between Eleanor’s student life in swinging 60s London and the present, this is a moving story of families and the secrets they keep.

—— S Magazine

Beautifully written, the examination of the mother/daughter relationship elevates what is already a warm and compelling read.

—— Woman

My favourite book of the year

—— Prima magazine

[A] comic masterpiece

—— Irish Times

Comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive

—— Daily Telegraph

It's his supreme skill in mastering a lengthily interwoven chronicle, the evolution of such a range and variety of pin-point characters, the wit and the cultural ambition that give the novel a unique place in English Literature.

—— Melvyn Bragg

Compelling

—— Andrew Neather , Evening Standard

Astounding... A work of such sincerity that, to paraphrase Baudelaire, the paper shrivels and flares at the touch of his fiery pen

—— Daniel Fraser , Quietus

Free-form, fear-filled, densely descriptive…Norway’s biggest literary star since Ibsen… [Knausgaard] has no obvious superiors among the writers now available to an English-reading public

—— Leo Robson , New Statesman

Absorbing and ambitious. Filled with sharp observations about the way in which we live now, Everything You Ever Wanted is both an acute satire of our social-media dominated times, and a haunting examination of depression and anxiety rendered in diamond sharp prose with barely a wasted word. . . It deserves to be on every prize longlist this year

—— i

For fans of Black Mirror

—— Elle

Millennial angst meets sci-fi

—— Stylist

Sublime

—— Otegha Uwagba, author of 'The Little Black Book'

An arresting debut about memory and trauma. In this respect and others, it resembles Julian Barnes's Man Booker-winner, The Sense of an Ending.

—— Daily Telegraph on 'Flesh and Bone and Water'

Luiza Sauma's debut novel is that rare thing: a completely absorbing, brilliantly-designed, literary work.

—— Anita Shreve on 'Flesh and Bone and Water'

Her writing is beautiful. I am sure I'll see her name on the spine of many a novel to come

—— Rachel Seiffert, author of the Booker-shortlisted 'The Dark Room'

Rebellious and subversive... Williams excels at visceral descriptions of bodies and food alike

—— Mail on Sunday

A bold and fresh story about food, friendship and feminism...compelling reading.

—— i

Bold, wild and witty

—— The Sunday Express

A small utopia celebrating the intoxications of female friendship and standing as a private bulwark against patriarchy

—— TIME Magazine

Coe can make you smile, sigh, laugh; he has abundant sympathy for his characters

—— Scotsman

This book is sublimely good. State of the (Brexit) nation novel to end them all, but also funny, tender, generous, so human and intelligent about age and love as well as politics

—— India Knight

Nation, published in 2008 (this year's award catchment runs from August 2008-September 2009), is an extraordinarily complicated tale about God, tradition and loss. Yet it is told with beautiful simplicity and rollicking readability.

—— Andrew Johnson , The Independent

Funny and profound, Nation is much more than an adventure story, pitting reason against religion and offering an alternative perspective on world history and culture.

—— Time Out

As Pratchett says: "Thinking. This book contains some. Whether you try it at home is up to you." His wit is on every page; his world surpasses ours, his writing is weird and wonderful. No, weirdly wonderful. It is gripping but put the book down to ponder the thoughts inside to unearth a parallel universe. Terry Pratchett is worth more than his idiom; his teachings contain more philosophical thought than I would have ever thought possible.

—— Sian Reilly (aged 13) , Sunday Express

A brilliant first novel

—— Rose Tremain , Daily Mail

A slick debut pulled off with brio, Swan Song is glamorous, vivid and sometimes even daring in its intelligence

—— Irish Times

A dazzling read

—— Image magazine

Greenberg-Jephcott’s debut is fizzing with energy and ideas…The novel has style and substance in spades.

—— Observer

With a grounding in history, it is a fascinating read about the deepest secrets of an iconic author.

—— Hello!

Intoxicating

—— Prima

Swan Song is utterly divine.It swept me up and I just couldn't put it down ... it is the writing in this debut novel that astounds most of all. It is vivid, addictive and whips up a terrific portrait of a deeply contradictory and complex man, contrasting scenes from his unorthodox childhood with those from the gilded bubble he ended up in that he lanced through his own actions.

—— Victoria Sadler

A sumptuous look at the icons of Manhattan's high society scene in the mid-20th century ... An immersive readthat will have you questioning real histories versus the ones we create for ourselves.

—— History Extra
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