The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop

Rachel and Alison, two girls who have come of age in an era of reality TV and social media, stalk a vividly imagined world alongside surviving characters from Coe’s earlier novel ‘What A Carve Up!’, the classic 90s satire. Rachel, a bewildered Oxford graduate, finds herself catapulted into the world of private tutoring for the super-rich, while Alison’s dreams of becoming an artist are quashed by a bitter tabloid columnist. Jonathan Coe’s new novel is the story for our times: moving from the distant rumble of the Iraq War to the austerity years of the Britain we know now. Coe uses all his wit and acute powers of satire and observation to show up a mirror to our absurd and unsettling new world.