The Book Of Coventry
A City in Short Fiction
(Comma Press)
Anyone who knows me knows I have quite a passion, almost an obsession, with the City of Coventry. It was where I was born and live, and whether it is the mighty Sky Blues Football Club, the local music scene or anything remotely cultural I’m there supporting and waxing lyrical about it. With this in mind I was delighted to be given the opportunity to read and review The Book of Coventry, a collection of eleven short fictional stories about my City.
The line: ‘For the people of Coventry where legends are born and rise’, had me straight away, although sadly it didn’t completely hold me through all of the 176 pages, but I’ll get onto that later in my review.
The book starts with an excellent factually piece by editor Raef Boylan, who gives a quality review and opinion of the City that only a ‘Cov Kid’ could have, and it really ticked all the boxes for me, especially the comment: ‘Citizens oscillate wildly between fondness and frustration’ ‘while outsiders seem to perceive the city as laughably insignificant’. I’m with you one hundred percent on that, Raef.
Following a great summary of the City highlighting its significant industrial past making watches, bicycles, cars and it’s World War II manufacturing, and it’s culture including 2Tone music, we move onto eleven pieces of short fiction. The writers are, in the main, established writers and creatives, and this is obvious with their well written pieces. We are told that they were given free rein to write what they wanted with no prescribed themes. This allows for a, in most cases, different take on several important themes that apart from an account of a girls' experiences during the Blitz aka 'Operation Moonlight Sonata' of 14 November 1940, cover the characters Coventry lives from the late 1970s to date.
The works cover such important topics as football violence, racism, politics, culture, cultures and the dilemmas of life. They also pinpoint places, streets and landmarks that only people from Coventry could relate to and be nostalgic over such as the Highfield Road football stadium, the Shambles Arcade and the Poster Place, although there can be no forgiveness for the misspelling of one of Coventry’s most important bands, The Selecter. It’s spelt with an ‘e’, not as 'Selector'! That’s almost as bad as calling a batch a bread roll! I'm just saying...
Now, although all eleven stories are well written, they do read a bit hit and miss in my opinion, with there being some excellent tales such as ‘Ten Windows’ and ‘Daughter of the Family’, which explore the city from both insider, outsider and different cultural view points, to some sadly average ones. Personally, although I found ‘The Coventry Boy’ a really interesting and well researched account of The Blitz, it was let down by a male (now sadly deceased) author’s quite graphic detail of a young girls sexual activities. It just didn’t seem appropriate and sat uncomfortably with the other ten stories. Now it has to be said that I sat and read The Book of Coventry in one sitting, so my opinions may be a little blurred, and I have vowed to revisit it over the course of the next few months, so I’m sure that my view on each story will change on a second read.
For now though although not all eleven stories hit home for me, I have to say that overall, as a Cov Kid, I found the book an excellent insight into the minds of authors who, like me, have lived and breathed this great City, and the most striking thing is all the stories have the same main character…the City itself… Coventry.
Essential Information:
Order The Book of Coventry from Comma Press here
We also wrote about Comma Press's previous 'The Book of Birmingham' back in 2018 here
