In his latest novel “The Proof of My Innocence”, acclaimed British author Jonathan Coe ingeniously spoofs the cozy crime genre while taking aim at the tumultuous state of UK politics and culture. Set against the short-lived rise of Prime Minister Liz Truss in 2022, this literary caper is a madcap yet quietly scathing indictment of the greed and amorality eroding British society from within.
The story revolves around 23-year-old Phyl, an underemployed English graduate wondering if she should try her hand at writing a murder mystery. “Death in a Thatched Cottage? The Beach Hut Murders? The Flapjack Poisonings?” She muses on the odd Britishness of the cozy crime novel, where violent homicide meets tea and sympathy.
But before she can put pen to paper, Phyl is shocked out of her stupor by a sudden death that hits close to home. Coe gleefully scatters clues and red herrings as Phyl turns amateur sleuth to crack the case, even as subplots unfold in the shady corridors of power.
A Satirical Mosaic
In signature style, Coe weaves a complex tapestry that is part page-turner, part state-of-the-nation send-up. The mystery at the novel’s heart is the fate of a fictional 1980s writer, the right-wing novelist Peter Cockerill, whose obscure book “My Innocence” may hold the key to the present-day intrigue.
But the real target of Coe’s satire is the incestuous world of the British elite, epitomized by the rise of Liz Truss. Feckless Tories gather at a country hotel for a “TrueCon” summit, giddy at the ascent of Truss and Kwasi Kwartang, scheming to carve up the carcass of the NHS for private gain.
The Dark Groves of Academe
Another thread follows the 1980s misadventures of Phyl’s mother and her Cambridge set, a sly exercise in dark academia. We witness the culture shock of a northern state school student adrift amid the port-swilling toffs, and the seeds of today’s establishment taking root.
Coe enjoys himself satirising literary fashions, creative jealousy and the inevitable passing of time, with a bittersweet nostalgia for his own youth, when society was seduced by money, and the books world by Martin Amis’s Money.
Experimental Asides
The literary fun and games don’t stop there. Coe tries his hand at autofiction as well, with an arch metafictional device: two narrators bicker over verb tense and debate whether their account is “fake and embarrassing”.
These postmodern hijinks are threaded through with Truss’s speeches and the grating transport announcement “See it. Say it. Sorted.” The effect is one of a nation blithely sleepwalking into self-parody and potential self-immolation.
Innocence and Experience
Holding it all together is the figure of Phyl, Coe’s latest in a line of gentle, idealistic protagonists set against a rising tide of cynicism. She wonders how she is meant to get by in a hostile world:
“How is someone like me supposed to survive in a world like this? Everything that defines me is unsuited for it. My passivity. My idealism. My innocence. I just don’t have what it takes.”
Coe’s sympathies are clear, but he resists didacticism. Instead, the political and cultural critique emerges organically from the characters’ plights and the deftly plotted mystery. The result is a novel that is both a cracking good read and a stealthy skewering of our present discontent.
The Cozy and the Cutting
Some may find the admixture of gentle mystery and state-of-the-nation polemic an awkward fit. The cozy crime elements can feel like an authorial lark rather than an integral cog. And the metafictional interpolations, while witty, occasionally disrupt the narrative flow.
But these are quibbles. “The Proof of My Innocence” sees Coe at the height of his satirical powers, combining genuine affection for his characters with anger at the injustices of the age. In this he is heir to a venerable tradition of English comic novelists, from Fielding and Austen to Waugh and Wodehouse, with a dash of postmodern playfulness à la Muriel Spark.
The result is a novel that is at once comforting and quietly furious, as befits our unsettled times. Coe remains the laureate of “Britishness”—its charms, its eccentricities, and its ongoing degradation at the hands of entrenched privilege. One suspects the author behind the author is, like his heroine Phyl, an idealist at sea in a fallen world. But also an entertainer, a satirist, and—on the evidence of this cozily scabrous performance—an undimmed talent.
But the real target of Coe’s satire is the incestuous world of the British elite, epitomized by the rise of Liz Truss. Feckless Tories gather at a country hotel for a “TrueCon” summit, giddy at the ascent of Truss and Kwasi Kwartang, scheming to carve up the carcass of the NHS for private gain.
The Dark Groves of Academe
Another thread follows the 1980s misadventures of Phyl’s mother and her Cambridge set, a sly exercise in dark academia. We witness the culture shock of a northern state school student adrift amid the port-swilling toffs, and the seeds of today’s establishment taking root.
Coe enjoys himself satirising literary fashions, creative jealousy and the inevitable passing of time, with a bittersweet nostalgia for his own youth, when society was seduced by money, and the books world by Martin Amis’s Money.
Experimental Asides
The literary fun and games don’t stop there. Coe tries his hand at autofiction as well, with an arch metafictional device: two narrators bicker over verb tense and debate whether their account is “fake and embarrassing”.
These postmodern hijinks are threaded through with Truss’s speeches and the grating transport announcement “See it. Say it. Sorted.” The effect is one of a nation blithely sleepwalking into self-parody and potential self-immolation.
Innocence and Experience
Holding it all together is the figure of Phyl, Coe’s latest in a line of gentle, idealistic protagonists set against a rising tide of cynicism. She wonders how she is meant to get by in a hostile world:
“How is someone like me supposed to survive in a world like this? Everything that defines me is unsuited for it. My passivity. My idealism. My innocence. I just don’t have what it takes.”
Coe’s sympathies are clear, but he resists didacticism. Instead, the political and cultural critique emerges organically from the characters’ plights and the deftly plotted mystery. The result is a novel that is both a cracking good read and a stealthy skewering of our present discontent.
The Cozy and the Cutting
Some may find the admixture of gentle mystery and state-of-the-nation polemic an awkward fit. The cozy crime elements can feel like an authorial lark rather than an integral cog. And the metafictional interpolations, while witty, occasionally disrupt the narrative flow.
But these are quibbles. “The Proof of My Innocence” sees Coe at the height of his satirical powers, combining genuine affection for his characters with anger at the injustices of the age. In this he is heir to a venerable tradition of English comic novelists, from Fielding and Austen to Waugh and Wodehouse, with a dash of postmodern playfulness à la Muriel Spark.
The result is a novel that is at once comforting and quietly furious, as befits our unsettled times. Coe remains the laureate of “Britishness”—its charms, its eccentricities, and its ongoing degradation at the hands of entrenched privilege. One suspects the author behind the author is, like his heroine Phyl, an idealist at sea in a fallen world. But also an entertainer, a satirist, and—on the evidence of this cozily scabrous performance—an undimmed talent.
