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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
Bournville taught me why I've always detested the Bond films. It also had me checking the Christmas chocolates for vegetable fat/cocoa content. Mainly, though, through seven episodes, with much grace, it examines a life similar to that of people we will have loved -- and lost.
emotional
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
In Bournville, a placid suburb of Birmingham, sits a famous chocolate factory. For eleven-year-old Mary and her family in 1945, it's the centre of the world. The reason their streets smell faintly of chocolate, the place where most of their friends and neighbours have worked for decades. Mary will go on to live through the Coronation and the World Cup final, royal weddings and royal funerals, Brexit and Covid-19. She'll have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Parts of the chocolate factory will be transformed into a theme park, as modern life and the city crowd in on their peaceful enclave.
Although this is about Mary Lamb and her families lives entwined with the history of Britain, it is actually all our histories. We move through 75 years of huge social change in the country and I think what it did was really make me think.
It made me think of my own families history, my mums family were the first in the street to have a television, everyone crowded in to watch the coronation in 1953, my mum little at the time, sat at the very front.
It also made me think how poignant this story is, to be reading this at a time of upheaval in our country, more war in Europe, the death of the Queen and a financial crisis- it made me feel there is a cyclical nature to our history.
This is such a very wonderfully woven story, rich in detail but with gentle twists and turns bookmarked by huge events in British history.
This is a book that is really going to stay with me, the final chapters of the book got to me, I think a lot of us will be able to relate to the scenes in some way. It was heartbreaking and I had a little cry. We are all really connected to history and Coe has executed this in a completely genius way, this is full of emotion and I loved it, plus there is chocolate. Bourneville is incidentally my mums favourite.
Documenting our history through the lives of one family. Pertinent, poignant, with wit and British humour to boot, what a novel!
Although this is about Mary Lamb and her families lives entwined with the history of Britain, it is actually all our histories. We move through 75 years of huge social change in the country and I think what it did was really make me think.
It made me think of my own families history, my mums family were the first in the street to have a television, everyone crowded in to watch the coronation in 1953, my mum little at the time, sat at the very front.
It also made me think how poignant this story is, to be reading this at a time of upheaval in our country, more war in Europe, the death of the Queen and a financial crisis- it made me feel there is a cyclical nature to our history.
This is such a very wonderfully woven story, rich in detail but with gentle twists and turns bookmarked by huge events in British history.
This is a book that is really going to stay with me, the final chapters of the book got to me, I think a lot of us will be able to relate to the scenes in some way. It was heartbreaking and I had a little cry. We are all really connected to history and Coe has executed this in a completely genius way, this is full of emotion and I loved it, plus there is chocolate. Bourneville is incidentally my mums favourite.
Documenting our history through the lives of one family. Pertinent, poignant, with wit and British humour to boot, what a novel!
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
๐ REVIEW ๐
ฬฬ๐๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ ๐๐ก๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฌ, ๐๐ง๐ ๐๐ฏ๐๐ซ๐ฒ๐ญ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐ ๐ฌ๐ญ๐๐ฒ๐ฌ ๐ญ๐ก๐ ๐ฌ๐๐ฆ๐.'
Where were you and what were you doing when you heard the news that Princess Diana had died?
I was on the last day of a family holiday in Majorca. We had just boarded the airport transfer coach for the journey home when one of the travel reps stood at the front of the coach and announced the news. I was fifteen years old at the time, the same age as Prince William. I seem to recall that particular holiday strongly.
You remember where you were, who you were with, during key moments in history. In Bournville, Jonathan Coe takes that fact and tells the story of one family by returning to them at memorable times in Britainโs past over 75 years. It is history as experienced by ordinary people living ordinary lives; a multigenerational tale with an eye on the social and political transformations that run alongside the changes within the family.
The setting is Bournville, an area made famous for being home to the Cadbury chocolate factory and spans from VE Day 1945 to the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Queen Elizabethโs coronation, the 1966 World Cup, royal marriages, the Chocolate War, Boris, Brexit and lockdown all feature.
Itโs nostalgic, funny, tender, entertaining and satirical. Itโs also quite unforgiving in its portrayal of the bad decisions of past and present leaders.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Itโs so very British, and therefore familiar and comforting. Best served with a cup of English breakfast tea and a Cadburyโs fruit and nut ๐ซ๐ซ๐
Thank you @vikingbooksuk for my book
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emotional
reflective
fast-paced
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
โPast, present and future: that was what she heardโฆ.Everything changes, and everything stays the same.โ
Iโm sure my request for Bournville by Jonathan Coe was inspired by the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. Promising a portrait of Britain as experienced by a middle class family over a period of seventy five years, I felt a tug of nostalgia tied to the end of an era.
After a prologue set in 2020, Coe begins with VE Day in 1945 where the residents of Bournville, a Birmingham village built around the Cadbury chocolate factory, simply known as the Works, are celebrating the end of the war. Itโs here that eleven year old Mary lives with her parents Sam and Doll, and over the next seven decades, coinciding with seven memorable events in British history, Coe revisits Mary and her growing family.
The unique structure works well to reflect the national and individual experience of the changes in culture, attitudes, politics, technology and economics. I enjoyed the sojourn through each โoccasionโ which includes the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, the World Cup Final between England v. West Germany in 1966, the investiture of Prince Charles in 1969, his wedding to Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, and then the Princessโs tragic death in 1997, ending with 2020, which marks the 75th Anniversary of VE Day, and the start of the CoVid pandemic, but it is the journey of the characters that illustrate their meaning. Coe charts the familyโs joys and griefs, triumphs and regrets, gains and losses, creating a history of their own as time marches on.
Written with tenderness, humour, and insight, Bournville evokes lifeโs ordinary and extraordinary moments. Enjoy with a block of Cadbury chocolate.