"Bournville"
This very afternoon I finished reading a 350 page novel by Jonathan Coe. It was titled "Bournville" just like the Birmingham garden suburb that was munificently developed by Britain's famous Cadbury chocolate family at the end of the Victorian era. Though the Cadbury company figures in the novel, it is not a book about chocolate. It is about an evolving family and quite ambitiously it spans the years from World War II right through to the COVID pandemic of 2020/21. Through the Lamb family, Jonathan Coe seeks to paint a portrait of the England that he has witnessed during his own life. That picture is generally affectionate and sometimes funny though his disdain for one Boris Johnson, former prime minister and arch-bullshitter is undeniably bitter. Jonathan Coe I would not call this a high-brow novel. It is quite light and easy to read. The ideas within it have an honest, everyday quality. As a backdrop to the family's progress through eight decades, the b...