How can a good novel be disappointing? The case of Jonathan Coe's Number 11

Are there books that are good, that are actually very pleasant to read, that have a lot of obvious literary qualities with a solid narrative architecture…and yet that flatter to deceive? Are there novels that, once finished, feel less than what they could – or perhaps should – have been?

I first read Jonathan Coe many years ago, with his Dwarves of death (1990), then went back to his first novel, and finally hit the jackpot with what I still think is his best novel, What a carve up! (1994). That last started a sort of series where novels are not necessarily linked except through a family (the Earnshaw), the epitome of everything Coe obviously feels is wrong with England: rich, entitled, greedy capitalists with no regard for others, certainly not for the poor – in a word, for all those who are not like them. Them? Eton-educated, nepotists, exploiters, leeching from the top, sucking the life and money and happiness from those below them, all without the merest sense of morality. All those are in the foreground, sometimes in the background, of Coe’s novels like The Rotters Club (2001), The Closed Circle (2004), and eventually in Number 11 (2015) – (very) enjoyable, professional, humorous, at times venomous novels, and the first two cited here do deserve being read.

Incidentally, it should be noted that Jonathan Coe is a best-selling author in France (as he is in England), like his contemporaries William Boyd, Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes – in fact, they have all won major French literary awards (something Coe refers to obliquely and ironically (or vainly?) in Number 11); more: Coe, like Boyd, was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, a (some would say useless) recognition not only of his worth as author but of his large sales figures in my country.

So: Jonathan Coe is not a small-time writer, and while his work always had a social and political side to it, it seems that this has only been increasing over the years. Yet what also characterizes Coe (going back right to the very beginning) is his comic – or comedic – side. Said simply, Coe is very, very funny – or he can be. He has a light touch, a feel for dialogues and for irony, he never goes in for the big laugh and he’s very good at mixing humour, sarcasm and social commentary in one-liners. This was pushed to its maximum in What a Carve up!, a savage, venomous and enraged satire of the English ruling-class, that is, the English upper-crust and the Thatcherites (and politicians, journalists, media moguls): old families with social and political connections, old families that rule the country and do what they want, the way they want, irrespective of the damage they cause others or their own country.

Number 11 is a different beast, and that’s where it gets interesting. It’s the continuation of those titles mentioned above but there is something missing. So while it’s a very pleasant read, it also feels a bit stitched together without a clear choice being made: is it satire? Is it rage? Is it despair? Is it an exposé, a document for the ages, a portrait of a time, a portrait of a culture? Is it a comic novel, a serious one, a comic denunciation, a serious derision? And what about that ending: is it Coe not knowing how to end? Doesn’t this sort of Deux ex Machina come at a price, that of resolving?

It first has to be said that, like all works from very good craftsmen, Number 11 is very-well put together, efficiently plotted, and the apparent looseness of its different sections is, well, apparent only: in fact, everything fits together nicely and all strands of the story, however distantly related they may at first seem, are indeed inter-related and inform one another (witness here the recurrence of the number 11). This, by the way, is a hallmark of great writers – a good story is not enough, a good characterization is not enough, you must have the talent to plot and organize and structure, something so many writers forget. And yet: other elements have to be there too, otherwise it may end up looking like a beautifully wrapped big fat nothing. Or at least, a beautifully wrapped mish-mash that doesn’t quite cohere in a satisfying way. And that, I fear, is what Number 11 does feel like: good, pleasant, very well done, but ultimately a bit tame and under-exploited.

So: Number 11, a State of the Nation novel – an exposé of the foibles, selfishness and cruelty of the powerful. An exposé in different narrative strands, with some characters providing a thread (Rachel and Alisson, their mothers, the grand-parents) and others being rather the ‘essence’ of a particular type Coe wants to skewer: politicians, old families, the ultra-rich, the working-class, the Red Cross needy, the Soup Kitchen users. Throw in a State of the Nation in an intellectual way (reality tv, misleading editorials, journalistic fear-mongers) and a couple of migrants (exploited, without money or power, fearful of losing the little they have), a Black character who’s also gay and one-legged (but that makes sense in the story, and Coe uses that very well indeed), and watch it all develop. Start it all off with a momentous event in recent English political history (the death of David Kelly, who was involved in the whole Weapons-of-mass-destruction-in-Iraq), right-wing grand-parents and a mysterious figure (swiftly abandoned without a clear resolution), and watch it all go.

One problem I find is that it often reads like an exposé while we would want some bite: it feels like a goodie-two-shoes pointing the finger and giving a good admonition (look at what those filthy people do, how they think, how they don’t care), rather more than it feels like a cry of rage expressing powerlessness, inequity and unfairness. Oh, those things are in there, yes they are, but they hardly ever come to a boil. The different stories are individually good but, in his desire to have an original (and complex but ultimately well-resolved) narrative, Coe may have sold us a bit short at times. Witness the episode with the policeman, which feels unfinished: I can well imagine there was no need to finish it as such, but then its length should have been halved. As it is, we are given too much not to care about it remaining unfinished – and it is not the reappearance of the same policeman at the end that solves that problem. And the less said about the final few chapters, the better: not just because I don’t want to spoil the fun, but also because beyond the possible symbolism of spiders (centre of the web, fears), well, I’m not sure it works really well, coming as it does without a thread hinting at it beforehand.

It's funny because the beginning of the novel presaged a lot more, and it reminded me of David Michell’s The Bone Clocks (2014), which has an exceptional beginning but then lost its way a little bit. And Number 11’s narrative structure reminded me of Charles Palliser’s Betrayals (1996), although Palliser’s is much more complex and intricate, and its different characters have very distinctive voices, something Coe’s lack. And I guess one possible reason here is the mixing of genres: Mitchell’s novel starts off with a type of coming-of-age, reminiscing and discovering narrative before turning into a Claire North-type of novel (I love her, but it’s a different genre altogether). Coe’s doing the same thing by writing in different genres but it never really feels as if they’re adding much to one another. And that, of course, is the great triumph of Palliser, as he not only mixes and mashes genres but also voices, and therefore identities – but in Number 11 those voices tend to sound alike, and their specific identity doesn’t add up to something bigger than itself (pace the Romanian character, who feels like a late add-on and a nod to stereotypical migration).

Ultimately though, the main problem for me is perspective, or the lack thereof: no attempt is made to see life through the rich’s eyes, or to question any of the ideas and values carried by the ‘good’ characters. It’s not that I would want to defend those wealthy people, or their actions, of course not, and I wholeheartedly agree with Coe’s political and social views. But I do think that such a novel would be more powerful if some attempt was made to explore how those people think, and view themselves – it's not enough to thrown in a private jet and examples of what money can buy.

In that respect, Number 11, while a very pleasant novel indeed, does not come up to the level of excellence shown by the wonderful Christ Beckett in his fabulous Two tribes (2020). There, Beckett is not content to simply adopt the point of view of the left-leaning, liberal-thinking, guardian-reading architect who narrates the novel, and to rail against the rich and the powerful, the unfairness of it all. On the contrary: Beckett takes us into the mind of the other tribe (xenophobic working-class who reject the world sold to them by those same liberals), forcing us to consider our beliefs, our instincts, our ‘knowledge’ of the world – forcing us to question why we should be right, why we value our beliefs, why we think it’s better to know Picasso than to know everything about cars. True, Beckett is less interested in denouncing, less keen to point the finger, and more determined to think about the Why, the Who, and to ask the question: who’s right? Is anyone right? What, in fact, does ‘being right’  mean? Is that even possible? And beyond this, Beckett asks a fundamental question: do we ever question that sense we have of ‘being right’, because of course we are…right?

None of those questions are raised by Jonathan Coe, essentially because the starting point of the novel is that the downcast, the downtrodden, the working class, the exploited class – all those deserve more, certainly in the face of the cruelty, selfishness, egotism and amorality of the rich. I agree, I fully agree, I entirely subscribe…but for me, it’s not enough to read a novel that – however fluidly, however enjoyable-to-read – just gives a snapshot of inequality and inequity: a novel that draws up the ‘State of the Nation’ today but where loyalties are established from the start, and heartstrings are played on so that we leave the room shaking our head and thinking ‘Bloody hell, things are really going pear-shaped in this country, and values have not only been undermined, they’ve been reversed, we can’t have that!’.

More bite, more venom, more acidity, would have made this novel more enjoyable.

More counter-arguments, more perspectives, would have made this novel more essential reading.

And that’s how a novel can be good, very well done, professional and enjoyable, and yet prove frustrating and, ultimately, flawed.

Go read Chris Beckett!!