Bournville - by Jonathan Coe (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Bournville is a quiet village in the heart of England famous for its chocolate. For eleven-year-old Mary, it is the center of her world, the place where most of her family, friends, and neighbors have worked for decades and where the streets smell faintly of chocolate. During the next three-quarters of a century, Mary will have children and grandchildren and great-children. She will live through the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the 1966 World Cup final (the last time England won), royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, and Bournville itself will gradually disappear into the sprawl of the growing city of Birmingham."--

Book Synopsis

A tender and wickedly funny portrait of England told through four generations of one family.

Bournville is a quiet village in the heart of England famous for its chocolate. For eleven-year-old Mary, it is the center of her world, the place where most of her family's friends and neighbors have worked for decades and where the streets smell faintly of chocolate.

During the next three-quarters of a century, Mary will have children and grandchildren and great-children. She will live through the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and the 1966 World Cup final (the last time England won), royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, and Bournville itself will gradually disappear into the sprawl of the growing city of Birmingham.

As we travel through seventy-five years of social change, from James Bond to Princess Diana, and from wartime nostalgia to the World Wide Web, one pressing question starts to emerge: will these changing times bring Mary's family--and their country--closer together, or leave them more adrift and divided than ever before?

Bournville is a rich and poignant new novel from the bestselling, Costa award-winning author of Middle England. It is the story of a woman, of a nation's love affair with chocolate, of Britain itself.

Review Quotes

★ "Coe...deftly encapsulates 80 years of British history in this tender portrait of a woman, based on his mother, who lived through it all."--Library Journal (starred)

"One family's odyssey spotlights England's transformation between VE Day and the coronavirus pandemic....Perfect for readers who appreciate thoughtful and substantive fiction."--Kirkus Reviews

"With his third novel in four years, Coe is on a roll; he tracks the fortunes of a family through snapshots of communal experiences, from the Queen's coronation through the 1966 World Cup to pandemic lockdown, in a moving, compassionate portrait of individual and national change."―The Guardian (UK), Best Fiction of 2022

"A compelling social history that's sprinkled throughout with Coe's inimitable humour, love and white-hot anger."--Evening Standard (UK)

"A hugely impressive state-of-the-nation tale."―The Observer (UK)

"This charming read is as warming, rich and comforting as a mug of hot chocolate."―The Times (UK)

'This is another eminently readable Coe, full of believable characters and fizzing dialogue. And it couldn't be more timely."―Big Issue (UK)

"Told with compassion, steadiness, decency and always a glint in the eye, this is a novel that both challenges and delights. For anyone who has felt lost in the past six years, it is like meeting an ally."--Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle

"Warm-hearted, brilliant and beguiling...To show three generations of an ordinary Midlands family, their paths taken and not taken, their friends, lovers, jobs, achievements and losses; to interweave this with 75 years of national history--and to do so with such a lightness of touch is a tremendous achievement. All the absurdities of our nation wrapped up in something as bitter, sweet, and addictive as a bar of the best Bournville chocolate."--Amanda Craig, author of The Golden Rule