Bournville by Jonathan Coe

This month we are introducing a state-of the-nation novel, Bournville, by Jonathan Coe, published in 2022.

What’s the book about?

The description on the back of the novel says:

In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For 11-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it’s the centre of the world. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup Final, Royal weddings and Royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She will have children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. As 75 years of social change ensue, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question emerges: will these changing times bring Mary’s family –  and their country – closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?

Reading Circle members‘ book recommendations

• Baumgartner by Paul Auster (2023). Written after the death of his wife, about their relationship.
• The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018). Follows nine Americans, whose unique life experiences with trees bring them together to address the destruction of forests.
• The Practice of Not Thinking: A Guide to Mindful Living by Ryunosuke Koike (2021). How to think less and not have our thoughts polluted, written by a Japanese former Buddhist monk.
• Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2025) About a very strong Nigerian woman and the people surrounding her.
• Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Noah  Harare (2024). The story of how information networks have made, and unmade, our world.
• Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran (2022). Set in Sydney, by an Australian author of Sri Lankan descent, about an old peoples‘ home run by a Sri Lankan family.
• The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam (2016). A day and a night in the lives of two young Tamils who are forced into marriage as the Sri Lankan army intensifies its bombardment of the camp on the north-eastern coast where they are taking refuge.

Music played

• Zadok the Priest by George Frederick Handel, composed for the coronation of George II, and played at every British coronation since then.
• `Liturgie de cristal‘, the opening movement of Olivier Messiaen’s `Quatuor pour la fin du temps‘.