He wrote this big novel quickly, in twelve months, just after June 4, 2020. It was on this date that his mother died, at the age of 86, in full confinement. A click. And as an emergency. “She is the Mary Lamb of the disunited Kingdom, and I invented a family for her,” Jonathan Coe told us in mid-October, during a first visit to Paris. The beginning of a veritable marathon, Le Royaume disuni coming out simultaneously in Great Britain, Italy and France (translation from English by Marguerite Capelle. Gallimard, 496 p., 23 euros). Ah France, blessed country for the child of Birmingham. Readers adore this slayer observer of British failings, making a success of each of his publications (English Testament, The Very Private Life of Mr Sim, Expo 58). So much so that the first print run of his novel is larger here than across the Channel – 45,000 copies versus 18,500.
A not really crazy bet as this 14th fiction constitutes a formidable “state-of-the-nation novel”, as the British say to qualify these novels which take the pulse of society. With The Disunited Kingdom (Bournville for the original title), Jonathan Coe indeed offers an astonishing radioscopy of England, brushing some seventy years of societal and political evolution through the destiny of a family punctuated by seven key dates . Seven like the seven deadly sins? “Not at all, laughs the 61-year-old man with white hair and youthful look, There is something a little magical around the number 7. I could have chosen six or eight but that would not have had the same meaning.” An “elementary” explanation, which is reminiscent of the one he gave us in 2016 when the mischievous Number 11 was published: “Number 11, because this is my 11th novel and after having written this provisional title on his manuscript, I was too lazy to change it. And then, I like this odd number, unlike the 12, which is so boring.”
So go for the seven key dates in British mythology, from May 8, 1945, VE Day, to her 75th birthday, May 8, 2020, through the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II on June 2, 1953, the final of the World Cup: England against West Germany on July 30, 1966, the investiture of the Prince of Wales on July 1, 1969, his marriage to Lady Di (July 29, 1981) and her funeral (September 6 1997). Not so much that the novelist has a real attachment to royalty or that he is a football fan: what interests him is the way in which his fellow citizens view these collective high masses and the exploration of the factors of disunity over the decades, such as anti-German sentiment, the royal family, Welsh separatism, Thatcherism, racism, homosexuality, euroscepticism, Brexit…
Only, perhaps, the iconic James Bond and Beatles escape possible differences: “Yes, it’s incongruous, notes the author, Bond has nothing to admire, he can even be racist and sadistic, but he is so exceptional, and then he saves the world, and that’s good English Fun fact, I recently learned that Love me Do, the Beatles’ first single, and the first James Bond film, Dr. No, came out on the same day, October 5, 1962. The best times are there, certainly, in the 1960s, popular culture was full of energy and there was still confidence in a strong welfare state.
It was in Bournville, in the south of Birmingham, a “model” district founded at the end of the 19th century for the employees of the Cadbury chocolate company, that Jonathan Coe planted the relatives of his mother’s “look-alike”, Mary Lamb . A very middle class family (father banker, mother sports teacher, and three sons with divergent political trajectories) whose fortunes and misfortunes we follow narrated with the customary humor of their creator – thus memorable chapters on the “chocolate war” between France and England or the media coverage of European affairs by the journalist “Boris” (Johnson). Obviously, we are particularly attached to the energetic and delicious Mary, whose rigor has softened over the years, and we applaud the corrosive (but also empathetic) pen of her son, the king of social satire.
