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Recommendations based on The Rotters' Clubby Jonathan Coe
* statistically, based on millions of data-points provided by fellow humans
What a Carve Up!
by Jonathan Coe
A satirical novel that explores the lives of the Winshaw family, a wealthy and corrupt British clan. Darkly humorous and politically charged.
Godfrey, son of the wealthy Matthew and Frances Winshaw of Yorkshire, is shot down by German anti-aircraft fire during a secret wartime mission over Berlin, on 30 November 1942. His sister Tabitha ... (Wikipedia)
The House of Sleep
by Jonathan Coe
Exploring the lives of interconnected individuals as dreams and reality intertwine.
Like a surreal and highly caffeinated version of The Big Chill , Jonathan Coe's new novel follows four students who knew each other in college in the eighties. Sarah is a narcoleptic who has dreams ... (Goodreads)
High Fidelity
by Nick Hornby
A man reflects on his past relationships while trying to understand the nature of love.
Rob Fleming is a 35-year-old man who owns a record shop in London called Championship Vinyl. His lawyer girlfriend, Laura, has just left him and now he's going through a crisis. At his record shop, ... (Wikipedia)
About a Boy
by Nick Hornby
A man reevaluates his life when he meets an awkward 12-year-old boy.
Set in 1993 London, About a Boy features two main protagonists: Will Freeman, a 36-year-old bachelor, and Marcus Brewer, an incongruous schoolboy described as 'introverted' by his suicidal mother, ... (Wikipedia)
Middle England
by Jonathan Coe
A satirical novel exploring the political and social landscape of modern Britain through the lives of a diverse cast of characters.
Set in the Midlands and London over the last eight years, Jonathan Coe follows a brilliantly vivid cast of characters through a time of immense change and disruption in Britain. There are the early ... (Goodreads)
Atonement
by Ian McEwan
A tale of the consequences of a child's mistake, and how its effects ripple through generations.
Briony Tallis, a 13-year-old English girl with a talent for writing, lives at her family's country estate with her parents Jack and Emily Tallis. Her older sister Cecilia has recently graduated from ... (Wikipedia)
The Name of the Rose
by Umberto Eco
A Franciscan friar investigates a series of murders in a medieval monastery, uncovering a sinister plot.
In 1327, Franciscan friar William of Baskerville and Adso of Melk , a Benedictine novice travelling under his protection, arrive at a Benedictine monastery in Northern Italy to attend a theological ... (Wikipedia)
Cloud Atlas
by David Mitchell
A dynamic narrative spanning centuries, exploring the interconnectedness of humanity.
The book consists of six nested stories; each is read or observed by a main character of the next, thus they progress in time through the central sixth story. The first five stories are each ... (Wikipedia)
Seeing
by José Saramago
A story of an old man's journey to find meaning in a world of chaos and suffering.
Seeing is set in the same unnamed country featured in, Blindness,. The story begins with a parliamentary election, in which the majority (83%) of the populace cast blank ballots. The first half of ... (Wikipedia)
The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx
A man's attempt to rebuild his life in a small Newfoundland town, discovering compassion and joy.
The story centers around Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from upstate New York , whose father had emigrated from Newfoundland . Shortly after his parents' joint suicide, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive ... (Wikipedia)
The Noise of Time
by Julian Barnes
A fictionalized account of the life of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, exploring the tension between artistic integrity and political pressure.
A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich: Julian Barnes’s first novel since his best-selling, Man Booker Prize–winning The Sense of an Ending. In 1936, ... (Goodreads)
Lucky Jim
by Kingsley Amis
A story of a young lecturer struggling to make it in academia, while learning the importance of self-discovery.
Jim Dixon is a lecturer in medieval history at a red brick university in the English Midlands . He has made an unsure start and, towards the end of the academic year, is concerned about losing his ... (Wikipedia)
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto
A young woman's journey of self-discovery and healing, exploring the kitchen of her dreams.
From Mikage's love of kitchens to her job as a culinary teacher's assistant to the multiple scenes in which food is merely present, Kitchen is a short window into the life of a young Japanese woman ... (Wikipedia)
Skippy Dies
by Paul Murray
A tragicomic story of a group of teenage boys in an Irish boarding school.
Skippy Dies follows the lives of a group of students and faculty members at the fictional Seabrook College, a Catholic boarding school in Dublin . The title character, Daniel "Skippy" Juster, dies ... (Wikipedia)
Norwegian Wood
by Haruki Murakami
A young man's journey of love and loss set against the backdrop of the 1960s.
Toru, a quiet and preternaturally serious young college student in Tokyo, is devoted to Naoko, a beautiful and introspective young woman, but their mutual passion is marked by the tragic death of ... (Goodreads)
Buddenbrooks: The Decline of a Family
by Thomas Mann
A story of a family's decline, tracing four generations of a wealthy German family.
In 1835, the wealthy and respected Buddenbrooks, a family of grain merchants, invite their friends and relatives to dinner in their new home in Lübeck , Germany . The family consists of patriarch ... (Wikipedia)
Sophie's World
by Jostein Gaarder
A journey of philosophical discovery told through a young girl's exploration of the world.
Sophie Amundsen is a 14-year-old girl who lives in Lillesand , Norway. The book begins with Sophie receiving two messages in her mailbox and a postcard addressed to Hilde Møller Knag. Afterwards, she ... (Wikipedia)
Capital
by John Lanchester
An exploration of the lives of a group of characters in London, revealing the dark side of modern capitalism.
Celebrated novelist John Lanchester (author of The Debt to Pleasure ) returns with an epic novel that captures the obsessions of our time. It’s 2008 and things are falling apart: Bear Stearns and ... (Goodreads)
Any Human Heart
by William Boyd
A man's life journey, chronicling his loves, losses, and adventures.
Logan Gonzago Mountstuart, writer, was born in 1906, and died of a heart attack on October 5, 1991, aged 85. William Boyd's novel Any Human Heart is his disjointed autobiography, a massive tome ... (Goodreads)
The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
A story of two unlikely outcasts who find solace and comfort in each other's company.
The story revolves mainly around the characters of Renée Michel and Paloma Josse, residents of an upper-middle class Left Bank apartment building at 7 Rue de Grenelle – one of the most elegant ... (Wikipedia)
Bleak House
by Charles Dickens
A social commentary on the English legal system, exploring themes of inequality, injustice and corruption.
Bleak House opens in the twilight of foggy London, where fog grips the city most densely in the Court of Chancery. The obscure case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce, in which an inheritance is gradually ... (Goodreads)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
A story of love and loss in a politically turbulent Czechoslovakia.
In The Unbearable Lightness of Being , Milan Kundera tells the story of a young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing and one of his mistresses and ... (Goodreads)
The Tortilla Curtain
by T. Coraghessan Boyle
A story of two families, one affluent and one struggling, and their intersecting paths.
Cándido Rincón (33) and América (his pregnant common law wife , 17) are two Mexicans who enter the United States illegally, dreaming of a good life in their own little house somewhere in California. ... (Wikipedia)
A Long Way Down
by Nick Hornby
Four strangers, all on the brink of suicide, join forces and venture on an unexpected life-affirming journey.
Disgraced TV presenter Martin Sharp, the lonely housewife Maureen (51 years old), the unsuccessful musician JJ and the rude teenager Jess (18 years old) meet at Toppers' House in London on New Year's ... (Wikipedia)
The Secret History
by Donna Tartt
A small group of misfit college students uncover a sinister secret and their lives become entangled with dangerous consequences.
Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the ... (Goodreads)
Disgrace
by J.M. Coetzee
A professor's fall from grace in post-apartheid South Africa, reckoning with the consequences of his actions.
David Lurie is a South African professor of English who loses everything: his reputation, his job, his peace of mind, his dreams of artistic success, and finally even his ability to protect his own ... (Wikipedia)
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
A fantastical, satirical examination of Soviet life, intersecting with the supernatural.
The novel has two settings. The first is Moscow during the 1930s, where Satan appears at Patriarch's Ponds as Professor Woland . He is accompanied by Koroviev, a grotesquely-dressed valet; Behemoth , ... (Wikipedia)
Autumn
by Ali Smith
A novel about the friendship between an elderly man and a young woman, exploring themes of memory, time, and the changing of seasons.
Daniel Gluck, a 101-year-old former songwriter, lies asleep and dreaming in his care home. He is regularly visited by 32-year-old Elisabeth Demand, who had been his next door neighbour as a young ... (Wikipedia)
The Solitude of Prime Numbers
by Paolo Giordano
A poignant story of two strangers struggling to find a connection in a world of loneliness.
As a seven-year-old girl, Alice Della Rocca is forced by her father to take skiing lessons, although she hates the ski school and has no particular aptitude for the sport. One morning, Alice is ... (Wikipedia)
A Month in the Country
by J.L. Carr
A man's journey of personal and spiritual redemption, set in rural England during WWI.
In J. L. Carr's deeply charged poetic novel, Tom Birkin, a veteran of the Great War and a broken marriage, arrives in the remote Yorkshire village of Oxgodby where he is to restore a recently ... (Goodreads)
