A sure but very light touch characterises this story that is especially evocative of a time and place – Brussels in 1958. A wealth of factual detail is mixes with an ever so slightly implausible tale incorporating a couple British spies adopting the persona of the Thompson twins, the dialogue between them is wonderful. Each time they appeared I was sub consciously expecting to meet Tintin and Snowy, but that would probably have been too much. The ambivalence of Belgium and the Belgians is woven into what are essentially Cold War spy games and US/UK technological rivalries set in the fabulous event that was EXPO ’58. As a twelve-year old boy I passed through Brussels that summer stuck in the back of my parent’s Hillman Husky on our way to Italy via Heidelburg and Zurich. Heidelberg so that my father could visit someone at the university whom he hadn’t seen since the late ‘20s, and Switzerland to call on relatives who had looked after me for eighteen months or so, three years earlier.
It was summer of awakening for me as much as it seems to have been for Thomas, an escape from buttoned-up Britain and alive to the possibilities of a vibrant and recovering Europe – a wonderful time before package holidays, when going across the Channel was very much an adventure. Jonathan Coe describes what that felt like with surgical precision and a kind of self-deprecating humour. After some fifteen years of war and austerity, Thomas’ journey into colourful, exotic Belgium is both exciting and profound, and his search for his mother’s family’s farm, destroyed during the war adds a curious touch of poignancy. Another superb book from a master of subtle satire.
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