I really enjoyed Jonathan Coe’s latest novel, a clever and funny story of a middle class Civil servant’s blundering attempts at international espionage during the 1958 exposition in Brussels.
Coe’s main character, Thomas Foely, gets a bizarre job offer to go to Brussels for six months and oversee the Britannia, a pub built at the British Pavilion at the expo. The chance to escape his humdrum suburban life and his gradually cooling marriage is too good to resist and so he starts his adventure. Thomas meets a host of odd characters and gets drawn into the various intrigues and plots of the international contingents at the expo.
This is a great light read, entertaining and fun.
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