The Rotters' Club Book

Telling his controversially romantic story Jonathan Coe is at the same time most ironic and nostalgic.
When we grow up it seems to us that we live in the best of times. But reality may be quite different… And the middle of the seventies was the time of stagnation.
"They sat and drank their pints. The tables in which their faces were dimly reflected were dark brown, the darkest brown, the colour of Bournville chocolate. The walls were a lighter brown, the colour of Dairy Milk. The carpet was brown, with little hexagons of a slightly different brown, if you looked closely. The ceiling was meant to be off-white, but was in fact brown, browned by the nicotine smoke of a million unfiltered cigarettes. Most of the cars in the car park were brown, as were most of the clothes worn by the patrons. Nobody in the pub really noticed the predominance of brown, or if they did, thought it worth remarking upon. These were brown times."
And even the flowery progressive rock - the main character's favourite genre of music - was nothing but an emblem of escapism: 'As the silence of seasons on we relive abridge sails afloat. As to call light the soul shall sing of the velvet sailors course on.' Behind extravagance there is nothing but vacuity.
"You don't understand what these people are about. At least with Enoch Powell you've got some thought behind it, something you can argue with. Christ, even the National Front's got an ideology. Of sorts. But these people… It's just an instinct with them. It's just hatred. Hatred and violence."
And periods of stagnation always are the most reactionary time.
But anyway the time of our youth is the best time.