JUNE BOOK OF THE MONTH DISCUSSION - come here on Tuesday 1st July for our June bookclub chat

[TillyBookClub]

this is the thread to come to for June's Bookclub chat on Tues 1st July - I'll keep you posted about the author chat..

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[JonathanCoe]

Squonk: I don't know - if you liked this one, try The House of Sleep maybe. I've got a soft spot for The Rotters' Club because it's largely about my adolescence. What a Carve Up, as someone mentioned earlier, is quite a bleak and angry book by comparison, although it's got some jokes in. (It's not really one of my own favourites.) Depends what sort of thing you like ...

[TillyBookClub]

Jonathan, we've been debating a few things earlier on and I wondered if you could give us your take on them:

Does Rosamund blame herself for Imogen's blindness?

Is Beatrix really the love of Rosamund's life?

And is the pattern that Rosamund describes as the 'meaning behind everything' the cycle of abuse, or is she trying to make some sense of it all? Is she making things worse or better by trying to pass on all this information?

[fryalot]

thank you.

I suspect we'll read them all kids asleep?

[billybass]

Very funny squonk...

Jonathan who was your favourite character in The rain before it falls and why?

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[JonathanCoe]

Pruners: after concentrating on mothers and daughters in this latest one, I'm trying to get started on a novel about a father-son relationship. But it looks like being back to the tone and scale of my earlier books - a big narrative, lots of characters, plenty of comic scenes, and so on. And a contemporary setting. Funnily enough he becomes addicted to an internet discussion group a bit like this one.

[TillyBookClub]

And flagging up a question from earlier in the thread
By TheOldestCat on Tue 01-Jul-08 19:22:04
I'd like to ask Jonathan Coe 'what did you think of The Rotters' Club telly adaptation'?

[fryalot]

addicted to an internet discussion site?

as if!

[JonathanCoe]

OK, I'm having trouble keeping up now. (And no, they're still awake.) Snowleapord: I like Kazuo Ishiguro, Scarlett Thomas, Charlotte Mendelson, Joanne Briscoe, Haruki Murakami, Alasdair Gray, loads of others. I get sent a lot of novels by publishers and I must say enough good ones come through my letterbox each week to make me think the novel is in reasonably good shape. Catherine O'Flynn was one which came that way - she's great.

[Marina]

And are there any plans to continue with a dramatisation of The Closed Circle?
TV adaptations of well-loved books often disappoint but you had an excellent cast for The Rotters' Club at least

[TillyBookClub]

I'd also like to ask: how did you feel when writing this book - was it a very different experience from writing the previous, more comic novels. Or is each book a completely different process anyway?

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

I really liked the writing. I could "hear" Rosamond speaking and it felt autthentic to me. Amazing what good education you could find on the outskirts of Birmingham. Or maybe it was the many years in publishing that gave her such a good way with words.

The bit at the end where everything gets tied up - Imogen's death, that blackbird falling on the car - I think the book didn't really need that. I was surprised to see them thrown in, too irrational compared to the writing style before it. Also the chase of the dogs, I don't think the book needed that either.

I think Rosamond mentioned at some stage she had no interest in politics but I was still surprised to see no mention at all.

[JonathanCoe]

Tilly: no, I don't think Rosamond blames herself for Imogen's blindness. Maybe she should, but she doesn't go in for self-blame much. I see Rebecca as the love of her life, not Beatrix, but feel free to see otherwise! I think she is (perhaps misguidedly) trying to make things better by passing on all this information - she's trying to find a pattern to her life's experience in the largest sense. But she's telling the story to help herself as much as she is to enlighten Imogen, I think.

[Pruners]

Message withdrawn

[carriemumsnet]

Sorry haven't finished this month's book though am enjoying it so far , but loved the Rotters Club - both the book and Tv adaptation. You say the book was largely autobiographical - what was it like seeing your adolescence on screen, and were you happy with the adaptation?

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Why did you go for such a predictable lifestyle for Rosamond? In publishing, partner an artist, living in Hampstead.

[JonathanCoe]

I liked the Rotters' Club TV adaptation very much. I knew it could hardly go wrong once Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were on board to write it. It was just a shame that we had 4 hours of good footage and the BBC insisted on a 3-hour series: the last episode was rushed, as a result. I think they were also disappointed in the ratings which is why a Closed Circle adaptation has never been given the go-ahead. Pity. I'm pissed off that they've never put it out on a DVD though.

Cristina: yes, you're not alone in feeling that about the ending. It feels absolutely right to me, but I know some readers find it too pat. Tastes differ, etc. The blackbird falling is another Rosamond Lehmann reference by the way - it's from her memoir The Swan in the Evening, when she describes how she found out about (or intuited) her own daughter's death on the other side of the world. I used her own exact words in the description.

The chase of the dogs is a story from my own family. It has personal significance for me, which was maybe why I dwelt on it so much.

I just couldn't find room for any politics in this one. I wanted to keep it short. (Although there is a lot of family politics, of course.)

[Marina]

that it never came out on DVD, is that likely to change
I was living next door to the swimming pool from 1981 onwards so relished the vivid sense of a familiar place in The Rotters' Club
Rasmus Hardiker was born to play Philip...

[MorocconOil]

I found Rosamond a likeable character until the end of her relationship with Rebecca. After that she seemed very needy and self-absorbed. Her concern for Thea and Imogen seemed to be more about meeting her own needs. Was this intentional?

[JonathanCoe]

Pruners. I wrote The Accidental Woman 24 years ago, I'm really not exaggerating when I say I find it hard to remember anything about the inspiration. But no, I'm pretty sure Maria wasn't based on anyone I knew. Nice to know someone remembers the book though.

Cristina. I didn't want Rosamond's career, or her main live-in relationship, to interest the reader at all. To me they're completely incidental to the main narrative of her life. So I decided to give her a fairly cliched "backstory" which would not distract the reader's attention at all. Oh, and I made Ruth a painter simply because I wanted one of the pictures described to be a painting.

[billybass]

I enjoyed this book. Thanks Jonathan for an interesting chat.

I will check out some more of your work now that I enjoyed this one.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Can you have a long-term love & partnership with someone, like Rosamond and Ruth, while keeping big secrets from each other (Rebecca)?

[JonathanCoe]

Mimizan: Yes, I suppose so. At least, I'm sorry if you lose sympathy with her altogether from that point, but certainly her life from then on becomes overshadowed by this terrible sense of loss and it does make her self-absorbed and a bit self-pitying. She's been depressed for about forty years, really, by the time she starts narrating.

I think a DVD of The Rotters' Club is held up by rights issues over all the music they used on the soundtrack (very expensive to clear) and a general sense that in ratings terms it was a bit of a flop. I have the sense that the BBC feel they "did the 1970s" much better and more successfully in Life on Mars.

[CristinaTheAstonishing]

Thanks, Jonathan. In fact I agree that a different career etc would have been a distraction.