:00:00. > :00:00.In this week's Meet the Author Rebecca Jones talks
:00:00. > :00:00.to Jonathan Coe about his new book Number 11.
:00:07. > :00:14.Jonathan Coe is a novelist whose books impressed the critics, wind
:00:15. > :00:17.awards but also appear regularly on the bestseller lists. He is best
:00:18. > :00:23.known for writing serious novels that are also very funny. He made
:00:24. > :00:32.his name with What a Carve Up! , a satire. Then came the Rotters Club,
:00:33. > :00:38.followed by the sequel that scrutinised new Labour. Then it
:00:39. > :00:54.becomes his 11th novel, Number 11, turning its gaze on Britain today.
:00:55. > :01:04.Jonathan Coe, the Number 11 is a recurring theme in the book. Tell us
:01:05. > :01:08.why? Like many of these things it happened kind of by accident. I was
:01:09. > :01:13.making my first notes towards the book, I didn't have a title and I
:01:14. > :01:17.knew it was my 11th novel so I wrote in about 11 at the top and started
:01:18. > :01:21.making my notes and it stuck. I couldn't think of a better title and
:01:22. > :01:25.immediately, to me, it evoked Number 11 Downing Street, obviously,
:01:26. > :01:33.because the economic state of the country is a background theme in the
:01:34. > :01:36.book. I also knew I always liked to do different things with form with
:01:37. > :01:39.each book and I knew the form of the book was going to be five short
:01:40. > :01:45.stories or novellas, linked by a certain theme and the Number 11
:01:46. > :01:51.seemed the perfect linking device. One story is set in a house that is
:01:52. > :02:01.Number 11, another is a bus, another a restaurant table at Number 11 so
:02:02. > :02:05.it became a very useful hook. The story is structured into five
:02:06. > :02:08.separate but intellect sections, with characters disappearing and
:02:09. > :02:17.appearing again come together they cohere into a portrait of Britain
:02:18. > :02:25.today. Why modern Britain? Well, more than 20 years ago I wrote
:02:26. > :02:33.highly -- I wrote a highly political novel, What a Carve Up!, he reaction
:02:34. > :02:39.to the Thatcher revolution. I suppose as a concerned citizen,
:02:40. > :02:44.rather than anything else, I was looking around me at Britain today,
:02:45. > :02:49.how the policies of hers, the changes of hers have evolved and
:02:50. > :02:54.been carried on by successive governments over the years and had
:02:55. > :02:58.eagerly how austerity policies are impacting people on the country
:02:59. > :03:01.after the 2008 crash, and it seemed like the right time for another
:03:02. > :03:10.novel looking at the state of written today. And you take aim at
:03:11. > :03:16.tax havens, the conditions endured by migrant workers, reality
:03:17. > :03:18.television, Internet trolls. The picture you paint of Britain is
:03:19. > :03:25.somewhat depressing. Are you pessimistic? I try not to be. Novels
:03:26. > :03:31.thrive on conflict. You have to put your characters through difficulty
:03:32. > :03:36.or there is no story so there is a tendency to emphasise the more
:03:37. > :03:40.difficult elements of life but there is a gentle optimism in the book as
:03:41. > :03:46.well, I hope. It is essentially the story of a friendship between two
:03:47. > :03:49.girls who we meet at the age of about eight or nine and by the end
:03:50. > :03:55.of the book they are in their early 20s. And the book ends on a kind of
:03:56. > :03:59.note of hope because of the strength of feeling between them really,
:04:00. > :04:03.despite the way circumstances have pulled them apart during the course
:04:04. > :04:08.of the narrative. There is an underlying optimism and faith in the
:04:09. > :04:15.resilience of human nature, I suppose. The book is very funny and
:04:16. > :04:18.there are some very funny comedic set pieces. Clearly, you have
:04:19. > :04:21.decided to write about serious themes in a comic way. Is that
:04:22. > :04:28.because you think we all need cheering up? We do need cheering up,
:04:29. > :04:35.as a reader and a viewer of films and television, there is a dearth of
:04:36. > :04:38.cheering entertainment around at the moment so I wanted the readers to
:04:39. > :04:45.have a good time while they were reading this book as much as
:04:46. > :04:48.anything else. One way of looking at an unsatisfactory situation, be it
:04:49. > :04:53.political or personal, is not to say it's wrong but to say it is absurd
:04:54. > :04:58.and to see the ridiculous and as of certain situations. That is what I
:04:59. > :05:03.try to do a lot of the time in Number 11, although it is also in
:05:04. > :05:09.some ways one of my darker books and one of my more horrific books and it
:05:10. > :05:14.pushes a little bit more in the way of horror and sci-fi than I have
:05:15. > :05:22.done before. It is subtitled tales that witness madness. Why is that?
:05:23. > :05:25.The structure of the book, as I said, is five interlinked stories
:05:26. > :05:33.and I took that from an Ealing film from the 1940s called Dead of Night.
:05:34. > :05:35.The fourth story in that is therefore comic relief, almost
:05:36. > :05:43.exactly what I've done in this book. That set in train portmanteau horror
:05:44. > :05:49.movies, which thrived in the 1960s and 1970s and one of them was called
:05:50. > :05:57.Tales Which Witnessed Madness. It starred Joan Collins and I liked the
:05:58. > :06:04.title, gesturing towards the form of the book and my indebtedness towards
:06:05. > :06:10.are movies. It is my guilty pleasure. You mentioned the female
:06:11. > :06:14.friendship at the heart of the book and one thing that struck me about
:06:15. > :06:18.the novel is how much of it is told from a female standpoint. Was that
:06:19. > :06:26.deliberate? And why do you like writing as women? Like many writers,
:06:27. > :06:28.I write to escape myself and when I write about men they are usually
:06:29. > :06:33.comes a point when I realise I'm writing about myself and that is
:06:34. > :06:40.exactly what I didn't set out to do so I took a decision very early on
:06:41. > :06:46.that the French, the core friendship in the book would be between two
:06:47. > :06:52.women and -- that the friendship. As it panned out I didn't use any major
:06:53. > :06:58.male characters in this book at all. It wasn't really deliberate but, you
:06:59. > :07:02.know, it was an instinctive choice. You do bring back some characters
:07:03. > :07:08.from the book. You have already mentioned What a Carve Up!. In some
:07:09. > :07:13.ways, Number 11 can be seen as not a sequel but a companion piece to that
:07:14. > :07:16.book, although it can be read as a stand-alone novel. Why did you want
:07:17. > :07:24.to revisit the OP 's -- those people? I realise although What a
:07:25. > :07:29.Carve Up! Ends in carnage and everyone is killed off, there are a
:07:30. > :07:32.couple of survivors from the massacre in the end and I was
:07:33. > :07:38.wondering what they were doing 20 years on so I revisited them and
:07:39. > :07:43.wrote them back. Does it get you that it is the book you are most
:07:44. > :07:48.associated with, giving you have written all sorts of novels since
:07:49. > :07:53.then? No. A lot of people said, when are you going to write a sequel to
:07:54. > :07:58.What a Carve Up! ? And I always said I wouldn't and couldn't because so
:07:59. > :08:03.many of the characters die at the end. I realised recently that Number
:08:04. > :08:09.11 is not a sequel to What a Carve Up! It is actually a spin off so
:08:10. > :08:14.this is the George and Mildred to the original man about the house,
:08:15. > :08:18.maybe that is not the way to select on television but that is how I
:08:19. > :08:20.think of it now. Jonathan Coke, it has been a pleasure to talk to you
:08:21. > :08:32.about Number 11. -- Jonathan come. Good evening. We have had some
:08:33. > :08:36.changeable weather over the last few days and more of it to come. Here
:08:37. > :08:41.are contrasting scenes from today. These guys from Chatham in Kent
:08:42. > :08:43.earlier on today, contrasted further