Pentatonic

Pentatonic

A Story of Music

Summary

Jonathan Coe's Pentatonic is a daring and original story about family and memory inspired by music.

When a family celebrates the prize-giving day at their daughter's secondary school, thoughts turn to their own childhoods. The father remembers his living room piano recital, recorded on a well-worn cassette tape. The mother remembers her own father's war tragedy. As the father searches for the physical reminder of his past and the mother longs to forget her own, they confront the breakdown of their marriage in the present.

In Pentatonic, Jonathan Coe movingly explores the memories that unite us and the experiences that drive us apart. The story is simultaneously available as a digital download with the piece of music which originally inspired the story.

Praise for Jonathan Coe:

'Probably the best English novelist of his generation' Nick Hornby

'Coe has huge powers of observation and enormous literary panache' Sunday Times

'Jonathan Coe's a fine writer who seems to try something new with every book' David Nicholls

Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in 1961. He is the author of eight bestselling novels including What a Carve Up! and The Rotters' Club, and a biography of the novelist B. S. Johnson, Like a Fiery Elephant, which won the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for best non-fiction book of the year.

Reviews

  • Coe has huge powers of observation and enormous literary panache
    Sunday Times

About the author

Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe was born a few miles from Bournville in 1961. The author of political satires such as Bournville, What a Carve Up! and Number 11, and family sagas such as The Rotters' Club and The Rain Before It Falls, his novels have won prizes at home and abroad, including Costa Novel of the Year and the Prix du Livre Européen (both for Middle England).
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more