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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | Fic Coe, J. 2014 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A comic spy caper and international love story, set in Europe in the middle of the last century, Expo 58 is the latest sublime creation by Jonathan Coe, hailed by Nick Hornby as "probably the best English novelist of his generation."
Handsome, unassuming Thomas Foley is an employee at the Central Office of Information whose particular biography (Belgian mother, pub-owning father) makes him just the man to oversee the "authentic British pub" that will be erected at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. It's the first major expo after World War II, meant to signify unity, but there's inevitable intrigue involving the U.S. and Soviet delegations. In the shadow of an immense, imposingly modern structure called the Atomium, the married Foley becomes both agent and pawn--when he's not falling head over heels for Anneke, his Belgian hostess.
Funny, fast-paced, and genuinely moving, Expo 58 is both a perfect evocation of a moment in history and the welcome return of one of today's finest novelists.
Author Notes
Jonathan Coe is the author of The Winshaw Legacy and nine other novels. His many prizes include the Everyman Wodehouse Prize and the Samuel Johnson Prize.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Thomas Foley, the hero of this small-scale but impressive novel about the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, is the quintessential English everyman. Middle-class and middlebrow, he lives in a London suburb with his wife, Sylvia, and their baby daughter while quietly plying his trade as a mid-level functionary for Britain's Central Office for Information. He is honored when his bosses tap him to manage the Britannia, an "authentic English pub" planned as part of the official British presence at the fair. The job requires him to be in Belgium for several months, and the sojourn is utterly life-changing. The plot mixes romance (with beautiful Belgian hostess Anneke) and decidedly comic intrigue (two bumbling British spies, Wayne and Radford, and an equally transparent Soviet agent). Coe is a gifted satirist (The Winshaw Legacy: or What a Carve Up!), and he subtly works in big themes here: Britain trying to finds its place in the postwar European landscape, and Britons trying to find their place in the postwar British class system. Coe uses period detail and historical fact smoothly, and the result is a droll, clever novel that ends on a bittersweet note. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
An upstanding British civil servant's life is upended during the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, Belgium. There is an extraordinary amount of complexity and homage present in this rip-roaringly funny satire by Coe (The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim, 2011, etc.), so much so that even readers with the most observant eyes for detail may miss a few marks. No matter, because in placing an obscure character in the circus that was Expo 58, the author manages to pull off the fascinating trick of portraying high comedy while being absolutely faithful to its extraordinary setting. Coe's Everyman protagonist is Thomas Foley, who first appeared as a tangential character in the earlier novel The Rain Before It Falls (2008). Here, Foley is an upstanding civil servant and dedicated if somewhat distractible family man. His superiors at the Ministry of Information are in a tizzy over the impending World's Fair, debating furiously whether a history of the British water closet is appropriate fodder. Foley is tasked to repair to Brussels for six months to oversee the Brittania, a modern-ish pub meant to be the jewel of England's pavilion. Drawing its tone from the broad comedy of the 1950s and its heart from Alfred Hitchcock's 1938 comic thriller The Lady Vanishes, the novel captures with lighthearted glee that extraordinary moment when Great Britain is caught between the stiff upper lip of postwar survivors and the swinging '60s that still lie ahead. Coe lays trap after trap in front of Foley, among them a beautiful Flemish hostess and a very funny pair of bickering British spooks who fall in the tradition of Thomson and Thomson from Herge's The Adventures of Tintin. For all the book's inherent humor (e.g. the American and Russian pavilions are parked back to back for Europe's amusement), Coe is extraordinarily faithful to the time and place of his elegant farce, describing the Atomium with an almost poetic sense of wonder and idealism. A decidedly British comic adventure that lovingly captures a long-lost age. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Perhaps you decided to tackle Tolstoy this summer. Or maybe you've just pulled your head out of the fifth Game of Thrones title. Tired of those thick, dense tomes, you're looking for a palate cleanser. Here is the book for you: a light, blessedly short, dry English satire. Thomas is a junior clerk (naturally) in the government's ministry of information, a solid, dependable man who has just begun to suspect that his newborn daughter may change his life more than he was counting on. Offered the chance to represent his office at the 1958 world's fair in Brussels, he jumps at the chance to leave his distracted wife and crying baby for the bright lights and glamour of Expo 58. In charge of the ersatz pub at the UK exhibit, he parties with the Belgian hostesses, confers with the Soviet newsletter editor who seems to desperately need his advice, and is trailed by the comical Mr. Radford and Mr. Wayne, avuncular British agents who trap Thomas in their schemes. Like the best books of this kind, Expo 58 is funny and smart, but not at the expense of true feeling and deeper currents. When best-laid plans go awry, Thomas' sense of disorientation ultimately leads to a far clearer grasp of reality than he ever wanted.--Weber, Lynn Copyright 2014 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
Coe's 10th novel is about Thomas Foley, a low-level employee of Her Majesty's government who is sent to the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels to oversee the construction and operation of a fake British pub and ends up embroiled in a case of international espionage. I know what you're thinking - this sounds like Graham Greene's classic 1958 entertainment "Our Man in Havana" - and Coe knows you're thinking it, too, which is why he has Foley's boss refer to him as "our man in Brussels." Like Greene's novel, "Expo 58" is briskly paced and populated with comic yet menacing secret agents, various beautiful women of various nationalities, friends who may or may not be as friendly as they appear and a protagonist who is neither as self-aware as he should be nor as dense as he wants to be. The novel may seem thin at the beginning, but it gets deeper, funnier and sadder as it becomes less concerned with what it's like for an ordinary man to be trapped in an extraordinary situation and more concerned with what it's like for that man to leave his extraordinary situation and return to an ordinary unhappy marriage in an ordinary unhappy country. "Expo 58," like "Our Man in Havana" and all the best comic novels, reminds us that comedy is not the sugar that makes the medicine go down. Comedy is the medicine - medicine that exists not to cure you but to make you realize, once the medicine wears off, how sick you really are.