What a Carve Up! [Paperback]

The shifting fortunes of England between WWII and the early 1990s is the subject of this broad, complex, genre-blending, scathing, and hilarious satire from one of Britain's best contemporary writers. The framework for this is a fictitious Yorkshire family, whose tentacles extend deeply into politics, media, and the corporate world. The Winshaws include: Arms dealer Mark, MP Henry, widely-read columnist Hilary, investment banker Thomas, art dealer Roddy, industrial poultry executive Dorothy, and institutionalized Tabitha. Struggling novelist Michael Owen is commissioned by Tabitha to write the family history, and in the course of his research, Owen comes to realize that the Winshaws are "wretched, lying, thieving, self-advancing" elites whose actions embody the decline of the country.

In a dizzying feat of narrative, we learn of the Winshaws' private and public lives, how they all intersect, and especially how intellectually and morally shallow they each are. For example, via Hilary, we see the rise of Murdoch-style tabloid journalism, via Thomas the insider trading scandals, and via Henry, the trainwreck of Tory/Thatcherite economic policies. But as if this wasn't enough to keep the reader's attention, the story also works in a mystery involving two mysterious deaths, and a strange running congruence to the 1961 comedy film What A Carve Up! The result is a whirlwind of genres, including old-fashioned Agatha Christie-style murder mystery, P.G. Wodehouse-style comic novel, Evelyn Waugh-style social satire, and Christopher Hitchens-style political polemic, all of which combine for a thoroughly entertaining read.

Some may find fault in Coe's ripe and vivid portrayal of this family of scoundrels, but it's entirely in keeping with the satiric and farcical tone of the work. More importantly, it's entirely in keeping with the political nature of the story, for this is that rarest of beasts, a thoroughly entertaining political novel. Coe unabashedly lays the blame for social woes at the feet of the businessmen (and women), politicians, and pundits who profited throughout the "greed is good" '80 and '90s as the poor grew poorer. And if anything, the twelve plus years since its publication only vindicate his selection of targets as -- at least in America -- we have experienced war based on politically-based lies, ever-increasing consolidation and dumbing down of the media, corporate fraud on a massive scale, bioengineering of food -- all of which are directly attacked in the novel. A wonderful novel, one well worth rereading every few years.

Note: Originally titled "What a Carve Up!" in the UK, the book was retitled as "The Winshaw Legacy" for the US.

Jonathan Coe was born in 1961. The film "What a Carve Up!" (aka "No Place Like Homicide") was released the same year. Thirty-four years later, Coe published this book of the same name. The US prints are titled "The Winshaw Legacy." Is Coe's book the story of the film? Yes and No. The film is just a character in the story. The film and the story get bizarrely intertwined towards the end.

Coe carves up quite a story here, but it's not the dainty carving of a romantic sculptor. It's the irreverent slash of the nonconformist knife. It's the wayward chiselling away by the postmodernist pen. Out of these strokes emerges a story that takes stereotypes to an absurd level. Yet the absurdity doesn't offend your intelligence. It's as if the author signs an invisible pact with the reader: "Yes, you know it's exaggerated, so do I, but what the heck!"

The Winshaws represent a bunch of opportunist parasites who have checked into the world without the baggage of conscience. A columnist who generates mindless trash endlessly, an art dealer who sells fame for sex, a merchant banker with a morbid voyeuristic streak, a livestock farmer whose way of dealing with economically unviable male chicks is to put them in a mill "capable of mincing 1000 chicks to pulp every two minutes" or to gas them with chloroform or carbon dioxide... you'll find the worst imaginable faces of post-War England here, caricatured to contortion beyond recognition. Each chapter is a peep at the plot from a different angle. The principal narrator is a young writer called Michael Owen who is commissioned to write a biography of the Winshaw family. Most divergent outlooks mingle and collide and so do the characters in ways stranger than fiction, culminating in a kind of nemesis any deus ex machina would stay away from.

"What a Carve Up!" is a wild cocktail. Cheers!

This book was part of my curriculum at university and one of the few books from the Postmodernism course I liked (only topped by DeLillo's White Noise).
Some chapters are rather tedious but overall definitely worth reading.

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