The return of the rotters

Finishing The Rotters’ Club and finding ‘there will be a sequel’ posted at the back was a bit of good news. As was finding that sequel on my doormat. And here’s more good news: The Closed Circle is terrific.

Last seen on election night in 1979, the characters from The Rotters’ Club are now pushing 40 and bracing themselves for the new century. Coe manages to fill us in on the intervening 20 years with the minimum of fuss, and soon Benjamin Trotter, his brother Paul, Claire Newman (sister of the vanished Miriam), Doug Anderton and Philip Chase are up and running again. The key events of the first novel are footholds for the second, and Coe creates an incisive portrait of Britain at the turn of the century, with the private shenanigans of these characters set against the turn of real events: Millennium Eve, the threatened closure of the Longbridge car factory, 11 September, war with Iraq, and even Nigella Lawson licking her fingers on TV.

Claire returns to England in 1999 after five years in Italy. Her 15-year-old son is obsessed with her sister Miriam, who disappeared without trace at the end of 1974. Claire — with the help of ex-husband Philip Chase — creeps painfully nearer to finding out what happened. Benjamin Trotter is now married but still infatuated by the memory of Cecily Boyd, with whom he was in love at the end of The Rotters’ Club. Benjamin meets a young woman, Malvina, and strikes up a delicate friendship with her which is assaulted by his younger brother Paul. Paul, now a Labour MP, has fulfilled his early promise and turned out pretty insufferable. He commandeers Malvina and swiftly becomes entranced by her, risking both career and marriage.