Sarah A Smith
All’s Fair in Love & War
Expo 58
By Jonathan Coe
Viking 266pp £16.99
Jonathan Coe’s artful, comedic novels have dealt with the recent British past: the 1980s in What a Carve Up!, the 1970s in The Rotters’ Club, and the turn of the millennium in its sequel, The Closed Circle. Expo 58 takes a step further back and afield: the British presence at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels. The results are, to borrow a phrase from Coe’s parodic vernacular, top notch. An intensely visual novel, Expo 58 relies on the reader’s knowledge of British and European cinema of the period to create a world of slapstick and surrealism. Thus we have the buffoons of the upper echelons of the civil service and the resilient young hero of Ealing comedies (Coe references Dirk Bogarde here, but I had a composite of Alec Guinness, Ian Carmichael and Kenneth More in my head). Alongside this, Jacques Tati’s antic approach is suggested in the absurdist world of espionage into which the narrative strays, as overweight spies squeeze into Volkswagen Beetles or tumble from skylights, and mysterious hands appear to offer umbrellas to would-be lovers in the rain.
Coe’s focus is Thomas, a hardworking copywriter from the Central Office of Information. Sent to Brussels on the comic assumption that, with a landlord father and a Belgian mother, he will be perfectly suited to overseeing the iconic Britannia pub at the Fair, Thomas is quickly in trouble. Anneke, the
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm