The joys of reading contemporary authors in the days of social media is that sometimes you're lucky enough to receive a response if you ask them politely about their work. I was one of those lucky people when I asked Jonathan Coe if he'd consider this book a sequel to What a Carve up! and he told me that indeed he did. And reading this book, it just makes so much sense. It may not be a sequel in the classical sense as a continuation of plot, but it certainly is in spirit. The Winshaw family looms over everything and everyone, influencing the fates of every character we meet in different ways.
What's more: this book from late 2015 feels so relevant right now, which shouldn't be remarkable of course, but with politics unraveling in the UK in times of Brexit it is an astonishing achievement. And isn't the millionairess insisting on an 11th basement floor, regardless of collateral damage and risk the perfect analogy? Wanting the 11th floor not for a specific purpose but just because she can and just because others don't (no worries, this is not a spoiler but a minor anecdote). The self obsessed megalomaniac displays their own flavour of madness, the results of which shouldered by anyone but her.
I couldn't help but compare Coe to Bret Easton Ellis in more than one way. They are both sharp observers of the societies they live in and satirise them brilliantly. But what's more, where Ellis uses exaggerated violence to ridicule, Coe's characters re faced with different kinds of horror more personal ones, which in ways feel more grim because they seem more realistic.

As a follow up to What a carve up, this was an incredibly satisfying read that reminded me why I loved Rotters Club and What a Carve up so much when I read them, now over 10 years ago.