Bookmarked Places

“The Rotter’s Club” follows three teenage schoolboys – Ben Trotter, Doug Anderson and Philip Chase – as they grow up in Birmingham during the 1970s. The novel explores their love lives, musical interests and the wider societal events that shaped Britain during the decade, including rock music, labour disputes, and IRA bombings.

In the summer of 1935, on the country estate of her family in Surrey, 13-year-old Briony Tallis mistakenly identifies Robbie Turner – a family friend and the lover of her elder sister, Cecilia – as the man who assaulted her cousin. Robbie is wrongly convicted and sent to prison. Years later, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Robbie is serving with the British Army in France, attempting to reach Dunkirk. Cecilia is working as a nurse in London, caring for wounded soldiers. Briony, now aged 18 and also training as a nurse, comes to understand the enormity of her mistake and struggles with how she might atone for the harm she has caused.

“White Teeth” centres on two friends and their families in north-west London from the 1970s to the 1990s: Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Samad struggles to reconcile his Muslim faith with life in England. As his sons grow up, they search for their own identities. The novel’s action ranges widely, touching on themes of religion, immigration, the legacy of the past, parenthood, eugenics, animal rights and the pressures of urban life.