Most espionage novels are based on or loosely based on true events. Readers dive into a world that is exciting, scary, and unknown. This generally creates a serious, adventurous tone within the story. In Expo 58, a Jonathan Coe novel, there is more of a comedic tone, but still just alluring and great for the adventure-seeking reader. Expo 58 is a charming and refreshing take on 1950s Cold War politics and espionage. Most pieces written about this time period have a dark and gloomy tone, so this book’s comedic take is a nice breath of fresh air to show the ridiculousness of aspects of the Cold War. It's a very easy read – I was able to read it in just a day. The writing is high-quality. It is the opposite of your typical Cold War spy thriller, kind of an anti-James Bond novel. Coe has an incredible ability to demonstrate the quirks that make us all human – the children to the spies, everyone has a nit of awkwardness to them, the need to belong, the silliness mixed with sadness, and the desire to be loved. He adopts a humorous tone to convey that even the most serious and seemingly emotionless people are still human and relatable.
This 1958 World Expo, often referred to as just “Expo 58,” is the setting for this novel. To give background on this event, according to ExpoMuseum.com, “Expo '58 marked the return of the world's fair after an 18-year absence due to World War II.” The concept of human-commonality is depicted through the novel’s protagonist, Thomas Foley. Thomas is a minor civil servant who is selected to oversee the British pavilion during the six months of the 1958 World Expo in Belgium. This pavilion is a regular, traditional British pub. The reason Thomas was chosen for this assignment is because he is the son of a publican; he belongs to a lineage that makes him both admirable yet elicits jealousy from his upper-middle class superiors at his desk job with the Central Office of Information. Thomas reluctantly agrees to the assignment in Brussells, but is not thrilled because he knows it will cause additional difficulties to his strained relationship with his wife. However, the mundaneness of everyday, domestic life bored him. He knew this would excite him to be at the center of an important world event. But what is the cost of this excitement? Thomas finds himself in the height of the Cold War overseeing the British pavilion when the Belgians cleverly placed the United States’ pavilion right next to the Soviet Unions’. As if that did not complicate Thomas’s task enough, he is being followed by two members of the British Secret Service.
During the 1950s, many British people thought that the European mainland was exotic and “abroad”. This novel depicts this ideal through Thomas. Thomas himself is a fairly bland middle-aged British suburbanite with a fairly dull life, but daydreams of adventure. He wishes his life were more exciting, but he can't seem to escape the fact that he himself is not very exciting. The narrator describes the journey of Thomas first becoming friendly with an assortment of extravagant foreign nationals. These men and women that are possibly spies. Thomas embraces their differences as it excites him to be experiencing a life so different than his typical day. living a quiet life in Tooting with his wife Sylvia and their baby daughter Gill. The novel rapidly takes the form of a spoof spy narrative; all the tropes of a typical espionage story are present. Thomas is plunged into a world of sinister British double agents. Of course, he falls in love with a beautiful woman, Anneke, whose career may or may or not be espionage, and whose potential cover is being an Expo hostess. The story line progresses through Thomas’s curiosity to discover how industrial secrets are mysteriously being passed out of the British pavilion.
The book is inundated with dry British humor. The humor Coe utilizes in this story makes the reader feel superior than those characters within the story. It is as if the reader is more enlightened and intelligent to make sense of the situations that Thomas experiences. For example, there is a pregnant woman told she should smoke for her health. It creates a very satirical work that pokes fun, not of the job of espionage, but of those that write the stories of espionage. Coe has an incredible ability within Expo 58 to write true to the times. It is not as if the reader is consuming something about that time period of mid-century England, but rather the reader is consuming a piece written within that time period. He captures the spirit of the age by keeping true to the verbiage of the time, whether that is through the character dialect or the scenes he describes, it rings true as a novel that was published during the time period in which the novel is set. The use of satire though shows that Coe himself sees the flaws with the time period in which this story is set; and he wants the reader to recognize this as well. Thomas gets caught up in the glitz, glamour, and excitement of this world. The utilization of satire exemplifies the gilded-nature of this time period and location of the setting. Close to the ending of Expo 58, the narrator suggests that Thomas could be sent to Eastern Europe by the British Secret Service. He would be a spy under the disguise of being a businessman to conduct some industrial espionage.
Overall the story is sentimental and mildly sad. It is sad because it shows the blandness that can be everyday life and how excitement also is not the best. It is the epitome of the saying “the grass isn’t always greener”. The characters are well written. Mr. Radford, Mr. Wayne and Mr. Wilkins, the "secret agent" types, are quite silly and likeable just for their seemingly stupid nature.
The author does a good job of capturing how I, as an American, would imagine the British of the 1950s. Coe does this with little phrases like "a rum do" and characters calling each other "old man". Everybody is perpetually bleak and understated. Pots of tea and goldfish ponds with bronze statues and suburbs called Tooting and gripe water and packages of crisps with little sachets of salt. I think this would make a good art house movie. It painted the time period almost calmly and picturesque for it being in the middle of the Cold War.
There is a strong feeling for the mysterious force of emotional difficulties carried over from one generation to the next. It is disclosed that the elder members of Thomas's family moved to London from Belgium at the outbreak of the First World War, after their farm was burned and family members were killed by invading German soldiers. Thomas visits the location of the destroyed farm, where he finds nothing but an empty field. The sense of human brevity is well caught by the parallel the reader draws with the site of the Expo, which will soon be pulled down, its political intrigues moving elsewhere.
Expo 58 is reassuringly unreal. I really liked the novel for its relatable characters, take on humor, and showing the reader a different side of the Cold War, that especially Americans are not hearing about. I would recommend this novel for anyone that wants an easy read and laugh. Overall I learned the importance of taking the human-factor into account. That isn’t just to mean that there is flaws in espionage, but these are people that laugh and cry and feel awkward, despite doing serious work.