Briton Jonathan Coe knows how to combine the finest lyrics with acute topicality, spiritual depth with photographic accuracy of details. All this is in his new novel «The circle is closed».
“We need to change so as not to repeat the mistakes”
The novel continues the story told by Coe in the previous book The Rakali Club (Phantom Press, 2008). The reader meets again with her heroes, schoolchildren from the Birmingham suburb, after 25 years. Teenage problems were replaced by others: divorces, disappointments, losses. Sincerity, subtle humor and an amazing sense of time make The Circle Closed one of the most remarkable books that captured today’s day from both a psychological and political perspective.
Psychologies: Today, «The Circle is Closed» reads like a novel about a crisis: it accurately conveys that aching feeling of uncertainty about the future and defenselessness, which is familiar to many of us … When creating your novel, did you seek to look into the future?
Jonathan Coe: Well, if I could predict global crises, I’d better manage my money. No, the novel is set in 2003, and the anxiety and uncertainty it talks about is related to the start of the war in Iraq. However, no matter what external events give rise to anxiety in us, our feelings, emotions depend little on it — we love, fear or hope more or less the same.
The most memorable characters in your books are women. Why is that?
Maybe they just make sense to me. Men (and I myself am no exception), their desires, the true motives of their actions for me remain an unsolvable mystery. I am currently writing a novel with a male protagonist, and maybe that is why the process is so difficult.
You are one of those authors who writes more about losses than about victories and achievements. Do you think trials bring out something important in us?
Rather the opposite. Very often we go through events that change our lives, but we remain the same. Having comprehended nothing, having not learned anything new about ourselves, we simply mechanically enter a new circle — in order to repeat our mistakes again and again. It is no coincidence that my novel is called “The circle is closed”. This phenomenon worries me very much, it is important for me to understand it — that is probably why I return to it again and again. However, now I am working on a book whose hero will be able to open the ring — in order to become free and finally move on.