Jonathan Coe’s genial, likeable novel can only be described as a kind of lit-prog-rock concept album (…..) Coe recreates the period with such loving accuracy that I frankly suspect him of having planted a secret microphone in the tin Oxford Mathematical Instruments box I carried around in my school days. (…) (A)s always with Jonathan Coe, the sheer intelligent good nature that suffuses his work makes it a pleasure to read.
