The Cockroach

Reviews

A comic triumph… How do you make a show of people who are doing such a fabulous job of making a show of themselves? McEwan manages to do so with great style and comic panache. The Cockroach is a satirical novella for our times, sharply observed and often very funny… an entertaining read, confronting the reality of Britain today. The latest instalment in his [McEwan’s] imaginative scrambling of English social history and of reality… [McEwan] finds room, amid all the Hansard send-ups and diplomatic silliness, to allude to more troubling physical-philosophical quandaries, while positing an alternative history of economic thought that culminates in a wayward version of our present. Brexit has such a camp, knowing, performative quality that it is almost impossible to inflate it any further… McEwan manages to do so with great style and comic panache… very funny… McEwan’s comic parable at least provides some relief from a political farce that has long gone beyond a joke. A well-constructed novella by a master of the art. Expand reviews