Caledonian Road

by Andrew O'Hagan, Rubén Martín Giráldez (Translator)

La novela definitiva sobre la Gran Bretaña postbrexit.

Londres, mayo de 2021. Campbell Flynn es un profesor universitario de mediana edad casado y con dos hijos que ha dejado atrás sus orígenes humildes y se ha convertido en un prestigioso intelectual. Su vida en apariencia idílica esconde una serie de deudas, que Campbellpretende liquidar publicando un polémico libro de autoayuda. Mientras, Milo Mangasha, su alumno más brillante y transgresor, lo adentra en el mundo de la darknet y las criptomonedas; William Byre, su mejor amigo, está atrapado en un monumental escándalo; su cuñado, el duque de Kendal, mantiene turbios tratos con varios oligarcas rusos; y la vida de Campbell terminará cruzándose con la de gente de lo más diversa: migrantes ilegales, políticos corruptos, pobres pensionistas, aristócratas venidos a menos, periodistas militantes, traficantes e influencers.

Caledonian Road es un afilado retrato de la sociedad, la política y el dinero británicos, una monumental novela social sobre un Londres aceleradamente corrosivo, que ha sido aplaudida como la novela definitiva sobre la Gran Bretaña postbrexit.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Audiobook, Book Club, London, Novels

672 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2024

About the author

Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL (born 1968) is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author.

He is the author of the novels Our Fathers, Personality, and Be Near Me, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Guardian (UK). In 2003, O’Hagan was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. He lives in London, England.

Reviews

[Tom Mooney · Rating 2 out of 5]

150 pages was more than enough of this

[Kate O'Shea · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

I truly struggled with this tome. I read it 30 pages at a time because it addled my brain if I tried to read more. I know I'm in a minority (because I've looked at other reviews and ratings) but this just wasn't for me. I thought it was trying so terribly hard to be all things to all people.

We had Campbell Flynn and his wife Elizabeth who were both academically minded and talked in long, linguistically clever sentences about art in all its forms. We got Yuri and Aleksandr Bykov, the Russians who pulled the strings thanks to all their dodgy laundered money and fingers in every illegal pie going. We had the Duke of Kendal and his wife Candy who represented the landed gentry. Then there was Mrs Krupka who wasn't keen on other immigrants coming to England, along with her son, who organised illegal immigration, drug farms and sweat shops. Finally we had Milo and his girlfriend, Gosia who were the cast as disrupters but were, in fact, simply thieves who wanted to bring down the old guard and redirect their money to "worthy causes" (ie themselves and people like them).

I got lost in who was who, who was doing what to who, what everyone was talking about and what the point was that the book was trying to make.

I'm a fan of translated novels and books about places I've never been to and their culture. This often involves a lot of googling when words or cultural references are unclear. There were lots of things in this book that I didn't understand -- the difference was that after the first hundred pages I couldn't really be bothered to find out.

Just not for me. I gave it two and a half stars because I finished it, it didn't give me too much of a headache and I enjoyed some parts of it.

Thankyou to Netgalley and Faber & Faber for the advance review copy.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

600+ pages of cliche after cliche and pretty much every stereotype you can imagine. I found this repetitive, superficial and honestly quite dull. There is nothing original or fresh in this book - obvious cultural references are littered alongside obvious political references which get quite repetitive and predictable after a 100 pages or so. I'm just glad this was a proof copy and not a book I'd actually paid for!

[Krista · Rating 5 out of 5]

The professor’s study was like a painting. It had a sofa and a table that ran along the back, two lamps and jars of pens. The desk had an antique globe on it and a lot of paper folders. It faced glass doors that led onto a balcony overlooking the garden at the back, towards the shops on Caledonian Road. The garden was full of flowers and his wife was down there, watering the plants. On a bookcase to the side of the desk was a typewriter and Milo saw various piles of books; on top of one of them was a watch and a passport.

The publisher’s blurb calls Caledonian Road a “state-of-the-nation novel”, and that is precisely what it is. Opening in May of 2021 and covering nearly a year — from the loosening of pandemic restrictions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — big events play out in the background as a wide range of characters experience life in the heart of London in ways that precisely capture the mood of our times: this is one of those rare novels that I can imagine people reading long into the future to see how we lived and thought in this moment. Author Andrew O’Hagan explores issues of class and race and justice along Caledonian Road’s mile and a half length — a North London thoroughfare famous for its high ethnic diversity and staggering disparity of wealth — and through conversations held between a variety of characters, a large breadth of ideas are offered and challenged. This is epic in scope and succeeds completely. This will, no doubt, be huge for O’Hagan upon release in 2024 and I am grateful for the early access. (Note: I read an ARC through NetGalley and passages quoted may not be in their final forms.)

As he sifted through the ties, he knew the truth. Campbell would continue persuading himself that his book was a ripe and playful intellectual riposte to the times they were living through, but in fact he’d just needed the money. He lived with his duplicity as if it was an energy. He failed to see the danger in any of it. He had identified a daft subject with Why Men Weep in Their Cars, a daft subject he had immediately commodified to his own advantage, hoping it would be the huge bestseller that might relieve him.

Campbell Flynn is a celebrity intellectual: climbing from humble Glaswegian roots, he met a higher class of people at Cambridge (his best friend would go on to earn a knighthood, Campbell himself married the daughter of a Countess), and on the basis of a celebrated biography of the painter Vermeer, Campbell landed a lectureship at University College (despite not having a PhD), hosts a popular podcast, writes for fashion and news magazines, and has anonymously written a maybe-tongue-in-cheek self-help book for the “easy” money. Fresh on the heels of penning a controversial essay on the vanity behind liberal guilt for The Atlantic, Campbell begins a working relationship with one of his former students, Milo Manghasa, speaking here:

“Mum used to say it was the genuine task in anybody’s life, to find your country.”
“I can see her pencil markings in the book,” Gosia said.
“It’s the thing she always talked about. She dreamed of it, her Highlands again, after her own long journey. But I never knew, really, if she meant home — like Ethiopia — or there,” he said, pointing to the book.
“Maybe she meant both, the old place and the new place,” Gosia said. “She dreamed of a road that carried the old road with it, right back to the start.” Her face was lit up when she said that, and Milo nodded.
“Like Caledonian Road,” he said.

Milo has a Masters in Computer Science, and with an Irish father and an Ethiopian mother, he’s from the poorer side of Caledonian Road; still rubbing elbows with the boyhood friends who are now gangbanging wannabe rapstars while joining Campbell for drinks at his exclusive club and challenging the professor’s own performative liberalism. This relationship delights and energises Campbell — he’s the kind of guy who thinks that unquestioningly accepting his queer daughter’s nonbinary partner means that he has nothing to learn about the world, but Milo challenges him on everything — so Campbell makes himself vulnerable to actions that Milo considers “an experiment in justice” (for example: when small amounts of money from Campbell’s bank accounts are redirected to charity without his prior knowledge, Campbell is both delighted by Milo’s presumed hacking skills and open to experiencing whatever Milo has in mind for him next.)

At one point, Milo says to Campbell, “We are who we know.” And while that’s meant to stain Campbell with the sins of his friends (Campbell’s best friend, William, is under investigation for various business-related crimes and at risk of losing his knighthood; Campbell’s sister-in-law is married to a Duke whose offences might run even deeper), there is irony in knowing who Milo consorts with: his oldest friend is a knife-toting weed-dealer and Milo’s girlfriend, Gosia, is the sister of a drug and human trafficker (who, ironically, imports the slave labour for Campbell’s best friend’s sweatshops). There are many levels at which people are interconnected — with Campbell and Milo both being basically decent people wanting a better world at the centre of the circles — and insanely wealthy Russian kleptocrats keeping the circles spinning with their money-laundering and influence-peddling. Throw in Campbell’s wife (an astute therapist), their son Angus (a jet-setting celebrity DJ who makes more money than his parents), their daughter Kenzie (beautiful enough to have worked as a model, but interested in a simpler life), Campbell’s sister Moira (a lawyer and sitting Member of Parliament), various journalists, Lords, and working-class folks, and there is a huge variety of experience and opinion explored; all of it adding up to a recognisable snapshot of our modern experience.

A sampling of quotes:

• Police invented the sickness they prosecute. Filing false reports, lying under oath, planting evidence, controlling the streets, kneeling on people’s necks. You talk about assault: police invented that stuff, and they get lucky every day because you want to play their game. You talk about Tupac being a gangster. That’s where he failed. He was a philosopher. He was the son of a Black Panther. He got lost, bro.

• Campbell needed William the way some people need to smoke, or the way others need to gamble or drink to excess. William was one of his risks. His outer limit. We need a friend who embodies the extent of ourselves.

• The house of cards inside us becomes shaky when we realise, one day, that we breathe like our parents and are nervous like them to hold the world steady.

• The Conservatives’ field day will come to an end when people at home realise, as they must, that the Britain being fetishised by the Tories doesn’t actually exist. It died in the 1980s.

• The Duke was doing what he always did on these occasions, making a dick of himself, as Campbell saw it, booming and guffawing his way round the various circles of guests, with the old-fashioned aristocrat’s tin-eared notion of party talk, obsessed with social relations but clueless about social ease.

• That’s what they do, the young, thought Campbell. When they hear something funny they say ‘that’s funny’ instead of laughing. Maybe that’s what postmodernism was in the end: the naming of emotion, as opposed to having it.

• All these new ventures of his into social theory and politics, current affairs and self-help. He’d told her it was research, and she trusted him as a writer, a kind of moral adventurer, wrong half the time. Her mother always said Campbell was as good as a novel, and that was true, for the most part, but the Countess never said who wrote it or how it would end.

• “I used to know which part of the nation’s struggle we represented,”’ she said.
“Working people. Decency and fairness.”
“That’s right. But what if working people stop voting for that?”

• “You know the Russians paid for Brexit, right? It was their money that made the Tories believe London was invincible.”

As much as I recognise the progressive themes that are being advocated for in this novel, the particular details are very specific to Caledonian Road/London/Great Britain and I am looking forward to seeing what local readers make of this. The Russians, The Firm, Brexit, local Councils: there are power dynamics here that I recognise without really knowing, so I can only really conclude that, to an outsider, O’Hagan totally captured the state-of-his-nation.

He’d always felt shielded by irony and art’s mysteries, but sitting in his cosy hut, it again occurred to Campbell that he was not above it all. Maybe that’s the way a crisis gathers force and dimension in a person’s life, when anxiety metastasises from one damaged area to another.

Running to epic length — six hundred and some pages — there is plenty of engaging plot in Caledonian Road, but it did feel a bit long. And if I had another complaint: the women characters are less interesting than the men; either saintly, brainy, and beautiful (like Campbell’s wife, sister, and daughter; Milo’s girlfriend) or self-serving and nasty (like William’s wife or “the woman downstairs”), but where it focuses on men, this could also be taken as a state-of-the-male novel; there is a reason, after all, that Campbell saw a market for a self-help book entitled “Why Men Weep in Their Cars”, and I was interested in the whole thing. I can’t give fewer than the full five stars.

[Ari Levine · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5, rounded slightly upwards. This was the wrong vacation read for me during the two weeks I spent in the UK, moving through similar neighborhoods in North London around King's Cross.

This was a terrible slog through 600 pages of an excessively contrived and insultingly schematic State of the British Nation novel. O'Hagan was aiming to create a widescreen picture of The Way We Live Now like Trollope, but to my mind Caledonian Road most closely resembles the glib social realism and chiding moralism of late period Tom Wolfe at his most insufferable and unreadable.

So we watch helplessly as the damage of an enormous, slow-motion trainwreck piles up, the result of an overdetermined collision of detached spheres of London society: the old-money posh aristocrats, sinister Russian oligarchs, new-money upstart academics, vapid celebrity influencers, working-class immigrants, teenaged Black gangsters, Polish organized crime lords, and the collateral damage of undocumented Asian and Eastern European migrants.

In Dickensian fashion, every gear of the overengineered plot is forced to mesh with every other, into a not-terribly sophisticated conspiracy where we can follow the flows of ill-gotten capital through the veins of a fully corrupt and debased society. The action unfolds during the peak of the bubble of Boris Johnson's moral and political vacuity as prime minister, which witnessed the waning of the Covid pandemic and the outbreak of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Spoiler: the caricatured bad guys get their comeuppances in highly predictable ways.

O'Hagan is producing what he intends as a glittering and glib satire here, but the targets are such obvious and deserving recipients of our everlasting scorn, and the social analysis is so superficial, that every chapter feels unremittingly monotonous in terms of tone. He's also straining to feel relevant with youth Internet culture and North London gang members, but he just sounds like a cringeworthy middle-aged dad attempting to relate to the kids, whereas his satire of posh types reads like Wodehouse channeled through ChatGPT. The characterizations are so unidimensional (especially the thinly-written female characters), and the sarcasm and moralism are troweled on so thickly, that Caledonian Road just collapses under its own excessive weight.

Thanks to Netgalley and Norton for giving me an ARC of this in exchange for an unbiased review.

[Rachel Louise Atkin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank god that's over. What a disappointment after absolutely adoring Mayflies from this author. Caledonian Road is the exact opposite of that book - no emotion, completely flat, characters I despised, insufferably boring, pointless, and dense.

This book is described as a ‘state-of-the-nation’ novel but it is just full of cliches and completely dull. It follows a group of awful and immediately unlikable characters from the upper class in London, one of whom is an academic about to publish a book on male mental health who is tutoring a young working class student. The portrayals of the different classes in this book were just so overdone and almost stereotypical it was unpleasant to read. It feels like O’Hagan is trying to criticise them or even make a satire of the upper class but there is a distinct lack of wit or engaging tone to the novel which just makes it really hard to read when you hate everyone in it. I got lost between all of the indistinguishable characters and the plot was basically just about groups of businessmen and something to do with fraud and the Russians? (I’m just a girl… I had no idea what was going on). Genuinely I felt so bored through the whole thing I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

This book is huge and it’s a complete slog. I wouldn’t recommend this if you liked his previous novel.

[Andrew H · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had been waiting to read this. Now, I am waiting to forget it. O'Hagan is a real stylist. But this! It felt like Kingsley Amis resuscitated, another novel about pseudo-academia. And 600 pages of it. I must assume that Caledonian Road is a very long road in London.

[Stephen the Bookworm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where to begin with this epic novel .... with echoes of other stories that attempt to explore the state of society and the human condition at certain pivotal points in contemporary history...Caledonian Road is quite simply a rollercoaster of secrets and scandals

Andrew O'Hagan has dived into the the global playground that is London and what emerges is a story of worlds colliding and the darker underbelly of class divisions and the so-called 'establishment " of the rich and privileged,
Campbell Flynn - an art historian and social commentator - has what appears to be the "perfect privileged " lifestyle and with this comes an attitude of laissez-faire and not fully taking issues of life and people's attitudes seriously.. but things start to fall apart...Enter Milo Mangasha - a student of Campbell's - who starts to challenge his perceptions and show him an alternative view of life in modern day London and post Brexit England. Campbell is spellbound and so begins his downfall ..

With a cast of characters (many who are quite odious) there is a sense of a contemporary Dickensian London novel; class divisions, the stench of corruption in politics and and nobility, the confusion of identity in contemporary society and culture, old money versus new money and ultimately the human cost of exploitation to maintain position .. all twist together in a dark fable or our times- rather like a disturbing Brothers' Grimm story- full greed and retribution.

The book feels like a nail in the coffin of "Britain" and old established views and hierarchies- there are no winners.

There is humour amidst the drama and the pace is fast. There are some biting one liners . The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe spring to mind as well as John Boyne's recent Echo Chamber as the reader observes the collapse of preconceived expectations of entitlement.

This is a book that will be much spoken about ... does it give answers ? Not necessarily but it shines a spotlight beautifully on London and the greed, exploitation and the battle to survive .

Biting, satirical, moving,... take a deep breath and enter Caledonian Road but don't expect a smooth swim and this book will without a doubt leave you questioning many, many things!

Quotes:
" What does anything mean in relation to the true value of life and living- is what many value truly worth anything?"


"We thought we were normal. Turns out we were delusional even about our delusions. One day we might look back and say normal was the word we gave to our negligence ."
" You mean, as a society?"
" I mean as people"

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too long and everyone is so unlikeable. A lot of fun detail bringing different British milieus to life but boy does it go on. The name dropping - of brands, of artists, of writers - never stops, and with the enormous cast of characters you may be forgiven for scratching your head and asking who? as you read on.

O’Hagan wants us to dislike many of these people. The corrupt plutocrats from Russia, their craven vile upper crust British helpmeets, and the petty criminals who keep the wheels turning. And fine, we do dislike them. But I think we are supposed to have more mixed feelings about our “hero” Campbell Flynn, a middle class striver prone to (contradictory and often nonsensical) oracular pronouncements about the current moment, who is portrayed as some kind of truth teller and shatterer of shibboleths but never says anything that wasn’t hackneyed when I was a student in the ye old 80s. And we are certainly supposed to admire Campbell’s young genius mixed race foil, Milo, who is here to (literally) dismantle the old guard and usher us into a brand new day. But Campbell’s middle aged flailings never impressed me, and Milo is impossibly smug and holier than thou, so neither provides any relief from the general panoply of unlikeableness.

O’Hagen’s women fare better - Campbell’s wife Elizabeth has no discernible traits, other than to be loving and long suffering, but she is certainly not unlikable, and his sister Moira, a feisty Scottish MP, is one of the book’s most down-to-earth characters and most engaging. But this is really a male book and we spend very little time in the company of the female characters. In that sense, it reminded me of the “masterpieces“ of the mid-20th century, which likewise dwell on the white male midlife crisis, and which really have never done much for me.

So, after all of that, why am I giving it three stars and not one or two? partly in recognition of the effort that went into creating this huge rambling book. Partly because the audiobook narrator hit it out of the park. And partly because I do enjoy books bring different social settings to life even if I longed for a tighter hand.

[Keith · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have enjoyed most of Andrew O'Hagan's books (although I was a bit underwhelmed by Mayflies), particularly his non-fictions writing (in the London Review of Books: his long-form piece on the Grenfell Tower fire was excellent). But this new book of his I feel actually rather annoyed about ploughing through to the end. The characters felt hackneyed, unoriginal stereotypes without anything profound or even vaguely interesting to say. The young black characters speech made me cringe (I am not saying that I could do any better at portraying young London black men- I am sure I couldn't, but I'd leave well alone; I wish O'Hagan had too). And there was so much cultural name-dropping by the cultured white-class characters that I found myself rolling my eyes with the thundering predictability of it.

Sorry - but this just wasn't for me. I might stick to his non-fiction in future.

[Jenny (bookishjenx) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I understand this is a state-of-the-nation novel &
I understand this is meant to be satirical criticism & I understand that we’re not meant to like any of the characters

However, this book was so bland and dry and overwrought, I physically couldn’t get through it.

All the ironic statements that the characters came out with, all the high-end brands littered in every sentence & all the predictable plot points led me to extreme boredom while reading. I just kept thinking, why the fuck do I care?

I think the eye-roll moment that eventually got me to think about DNFing was the way he portrayed DJing culture; it came from a place that seemed so out of touch, and as if a middle-class man was trying to explain something he really didn’t understand (the irony...)

SO many characters, so many meaningless brands mentioned, so many uselessly placed words… I can go on :)

I’m going to see Andrew O’Hagan speak about this soon, and I’m verrrry intrigued to hear what he has to say about it. With Mayflies being my favourite Scottish novel ever written, I’m so disappointed in this book.

[Ted Richards · Rating 1 out of 5]

Way too long to be worthwhile reading for anyone without barrels of free time, a predisposition to "state-of-the-nation" self importance, or a Londoner.

Caledonian Road starts off with Campbell Flynn, a celebrity academic who is going through his own rage against pretty much anyone he wants to. His worldview starts out interestingly enough; working class man living in the liminal upper-to-elite class world, obsessed with money but tells himself he's obsessed with social progress. It's all good stuff for an interesting character arc. Milo Mangasha is the secondary protagonist, through which we see a poorer and struggling London. Had this book been 300 pages long, it would have been superb. Unfortunately there is just so much bloat to the whole piece that it becomes unwieldy, aimless and disappointingly predictable.

Andrew O'Hagan is clearly channeling as much Charles Dickens as he can fit into a M2 Macbook. He takes Dickens' most famous character- London- in new and modern directions. O'Hagan's London is bloated too, only with Russian wealth and a post-Brexit identity crisis, instead of 300 excess pages. A lot of those extra pages are spent demarcating the class boundaries, social injustices and hedonistic lifestyles of London's inhabitants. In so doing, O'Hagan attempts to write a variety of characters, succeeding more times than not. Yet the occasions when he doesn't quite key in to the voice of a particular character does come across as toe curling. Still, it is an ambitious book and I do appreciate a bold attempt over a timid shuffle.

On the whole, this would not be something I recommend to anyone, besides a Londoner who has a long upcoming holiday sitting by a pool. It was not enjoyable, cathartic or sensational; adding little more to our conception of the British state than a meagre "London's messy, innit?"

[Stephen Devine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I imagine this book will divide opinion but, for me, it's the most enjoyable read in years.

[Jaclyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew O’Hagan was a highlight of @melbwritersfest this year so this rocketed up my reading pile despite its intimidating page extent and large cast of characters. That list is completely unnecessary it turns out because O’Hagan is so good at voice and character development that distinguishing between them all is easy. It’s a state of the nation novel, something O’Hagan is well equipped to deliver. At times, and with one character in particular, it felt like he hacked into my own personal preoccupations with class and held up a mirror. He has captured a city, a country and a moment in time in rich kaleidoscopic detail and I loved it. I did feel deep pain for a few of these characters and their falls from grace while delighting in others. I listened to this on audio on walks and commutes and read the book at home. The audiobook narrator was truly excellent. I’m looking forward to discussions at the shop about this book.

[Eva Jade · Rating 2 out of 5]

He has written a lot, but said very little. I had no interest or sympathy with any of the characters and I couldn’t be arsed to finish it. I did though and the ending was just stupid, unbelievable and unsatisfactory. My mum read it first and gave it to me. I asked her what she thought and got a one word reply- ‘crap’.

[Jo Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I can understand this title being met with a lot of negativity I actually really enjoyed it. Sharp, bleak and depressing, quite the current piece. A genuine look at the state of the nation.

Quite the tome, but, worth it.

I’m thinking over and over about how explaining a box of matches to someone doesn’t make you responsible for them using them.

The audio narration is outstanding 🎧

[Stephen Goldenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

A disappointment after so many glowing reviews. It’s described as a ‘state of the nation’ novel which makes it sound much more interesting than it turns out to be. Early on, I found the plethora of characters confusing and got bogged down in all the over-intellectualised discussions of art and life. I was about to give up after 100 pages but decided to stick with it, partly because Andrew O’Hagan is undoubtedly a talented writer, but also because I was interested to see whether he could pull all the disparate strands, and characters, together.
And he does succeed in drawing things together at the end. The problem is that it feels like he’s just trying to weave every aspect of modern day British life into the novel, almost like a range of boxes to tick - illegal immigrants, drug dealers, Russian oligarchs, race, sexual assault, upper class corruption etc. It would have benefited from concentrating on fewer characters and themes.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh this was JUICY

[Ben · Rating 3 out of 5]

there are plenty of flaws with this book; mostly stemming from the fact that o'hagan is not a good writer. he has plenty of clunky sentences which are supposed to be showing not telling, but they do it in the worst way possible: "They fist bumped", "He turned on Shutdown by Skepta.", "He turned on the Headspace app", "He put on his Marc Oliver suit", etc.

i don't mind a long book, but this one had nothing really happening for the first 75% of it. there's too many characters, which are all introduced too soon and are basically all caricatures. constantly switching between these characters or having scenes involve so many made the first part of the book feel like a series of vignettes. the book is described as covering the downfall of the main character, but nothing bad happens to him until the very end (and he is also the most melodramatic character ever written). bad stuff happens to people adjacent to him, and some side characters are killed off to try to create some actual sense of plot, but there's nothing really impactful about their deaths (with one exception near the end).

there's one character, Milo, who is supposed (?) to be the good guy in this sea of morale grey, but he is frustratingly smug, impossible to root for, and involves some of the worst descriptions of "hacking" i've ever read.

despite all of this, the there were some plot points i did really enjoy. the last 20% almost made up for the rest of the novel, things happened, things moved quickly, things were resolved (very satisfyingly). i get it, it's supposed to be a Dickensian. but just because you want to rip-off Dickens doesn't mean you have to take all the shit parts too.

[Lou · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do love a big bold contemporary novel that is so current you feel like it could have been written yesterday. It’s a very bleak London in a matter of fact way. I liked it.

[Saturnia Pavonia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, it is readable, certainly- but is it a good read? Authors, when they reach a certain level of success, which Andrew O’Hagan certainly has, sometimes have a tendency to write characters who live the life they themselves lead. Kingsley Amis succumbed to this, with his university librarians who unaccountably are members of the Garrick Club. In O’Hagan’s world, a university lecturer, Campbell Flynn is similarly endowed with a London golden ticket, dining in the Wolesley, St John, drinking at Claridge’s, birthdaying in Michelin starred restaurants on long weekends in Rejkavik, Frieze, Garsington… just the everyday life of the typical academic. Of course this luxe, calme et volupté life is explained by his simply marvellous connections, a veritable jukebox jackpot of aristocratic marriage, influential university friends, and talented, successful children. Dark hints are made that this is all a bubble and so it proves. Less explanation on how he managed to accumulate enough for a lifestyle on par with the Russian oligarchs who wander through this book picking up £30k tabs. Oh, and he can devote two solid weeks to writing a single lecture. Not just ridiculous amounts of money but unfeasible quantities of time.
Of course, such a gilded yin must have its yang, and the book’s characters also include the less fortunately connected of North London, the Polish immigrants, mixed race comprehensive kids, junkies and undocumented are documented here and the plot revolves around the miscibility or otherwise of these parallel worlds. The haves fail and fall, the have nots weave themselves in and out of their lives and in one key thread escape the London weft altogether. There is also tragic violence, in one case based on real events. Basing fictional tragedies on real life events is hardly new, but to me there is a question about how much, when the real events are so recent and presumably affect real people still alive, it is really the right choice? It seems too like the relentless namechecking of brands in the first half of the book (actual example: “she went to the bathroom mirror, opened her purse and touched each cheekbone with a dab of Beauty Flash balm. She wore a metallic-effect midi dress by Maisie Wilen with a pink faux fur.”),- relevance by reference.
In the end, the main reason why this relentlessly readable but exasperating book does not work is because of what it has left out, quite a feat for something that runs to 641 pages in hardback. In between the upper crust of the aristos and oligarchs and the soggy bottom of this London Sandwich, there’s no middle- ordinary Londoners who are neither high life or low life, can just about get on with London prices still by having busy, time consuming jobs, go occasionally to unassuming restaurants unfeatured in the Michelin guide and living in unglamorous and uneventful areas of suburban London like Sheen. A perfectly reasonable pushback would be that these Londoners are dull, and have no place in excitingly relevant modern works of fiction. Nevertheless, they exist, and any book bruited as a state of the nation portrait* should, I think, acknowledge their existence. And a truly exceptional state of the nation novel might even conjur something compelling out of these mundane existences too.

*”state of the nation” is quoted twice in the puffs on the back of the hardback. Without, it seems, any self reflection on the part of the puffers that the book is very much focused on London, and that London is hardly the nation. No wonder we piss the rest of the country off.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Utter shite. I hated this book

[Rita da Nova]

«Caledonian Road leva-se demasiado a sério para ser uma boa sátira, mas é demasiado caricatural para funcionar como um romance que pretende espelhar o “estado da Nação”.»

Review completa em: https://ritadanova.blogs.sapo.pt/cale....

[Charlie Miller · Rating 3 out of 5]

This banks everything on the verisimilitude of its dialogue and doesn't pull it off, quite frankly. I'm a bit fussy about this, as a Londoner of 40 years who like many of us can claim to mingle in a range of social classes, it just didn't ring true, or more importantly, it wasn't a pleasure to be in the characters' conversations; it was a drag. O'Hagan tries to obfuscate the awkwardness by regularly plunging into largely unnecessary cultural references, but this just makes the novel feel more of a slog

[Candace · Rating 5 out of 5]

"People have has enough and there are new energies in the world," says Moira Flynn, a Member of Parliament and attorney in Andrew O'Hagan's magnificent new novel. Like a book by Dickens, "Caledonian Road" brings people together from different strata of current London society. None are unblemished, but boy, are they all compelling and worthy of books of their own.

The main characters are Campbell Flynn, an art historian and "celebrity academic," as O'Hagan describes him. The other is Milo Mangasha, one of Campbell's graduate students at the University of London, who has a BS in computer science. Campbell grew up in Glasgow public housing, and Milo still lives with his father in council housing. His late mother, an Ethiopian immigrant, is still revered in the community as a teacher and activist. Both men have dear childhood friends who are involved in bad stuff. Both have connections to all sorts of people, nobility, human traffickers, mobsters, artists, drug dealers, you name it, and no one's head is resting easily.

There is such an air of nastiness beneath this modern world that you feel that those new energies Moira describes are just about to blow everything apart. O'Hagan describes a party as being like filthy litter on a windy day, spinning in circles and ready to lift off. Will Milo's computer brilliance and the activism instilled by his mother be able to bring some of the worst down? Will Campbell be able to find his way out of the nightmare he's created? The humanity of every character will keep you glued to the page, and their discoveries will keep you up at night.

Many, many thanks to WW Norton and Netgalley for a digital review copy of this novel in exchange for an honest. Read this book. It will both infuriate you and break your heart.

[Lesley McLean · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aw. I wanted to like Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan. I liked Mayflies, particularly the first half. But I found this hard work.

I’ve read reviews hailing it as a state of the nation Dickensian work for our times, but I just struggled. There were so many unlikable characters from both sides of the social divide. They annoyed me so much I wasn’t invested in their future.

Billed as the story of one man’s epic fall from grace, I kept going to see what happened, but unfortunately it just left me flat… and it felt like an awfully long time getting there.

Image: book cover with road map
#fiction #book #review #reading #CaledonianRoad

[Derek Driggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what I would call a Great novel, a Dickensian novel, a Social novel, and a British novel. It is long and sweeping and what critics like to call “ambitious.” Critics also call it “thrilling,” which is the one reaction I can’t get on board for: I think this is best approached slowly, as a project.

The writing is excellent and reminiscent all at once of Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and of writers like Franzen and McEwan. There is a wide cast of characters covering a variety of demographics and social situations, but I think the main character could probably be most accurately identified as London itself.

Andrew O’Hagan is a very, very shrewd storyteller and this book almost feels like his own expertly crafted snapshot of a *city today* which should be of value to all lovers of London, those of us who have lived there and wish we were still living there along with the interested passerby!

[Ashwini · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars rounded up!

Caledonian road is a contemporary masterpiece reminiscent of Vanity Fair, offering a rich portrayal of life in modern-day London through the intersecting narratives of diverse characters. Set against the backdrop of Caledonian Road, the story follows the lives of five families spanning the spectrum of society, from affluent oligarchs to working-class immigrants, all driven by shared passions.

At the heart of the story is Campbell Flynn, a successful writer and historian grappling with an inner void despite his achievements and world of privilege. His journey intertwines with that of Milo, a bright young student of mixed heritage, embodying the aspirations of a new generation. Raised with working-class values by his Irish-Ethiopian parents, Milo's ambition and intellect captivate Campbell, and the readers are introduced to the complexities of modern Britain as they walk the streets of London.

Their encounters shed light on the dark underbelly of society, from human trafficking to corruption, challenging Campbell's perception and making him rethink his understanding of the world of luxury and aristocracy in which he lives. Alongside Russian plutocrats and figures from his past, Campbell encounters individuals from various backgrounds – migrants, musicians, and those with ties to the criminal underworld – each offering a unique perspective on contemporary life.

Authentic and so well crafted, the story unfolds against the backdrop of post-lockdown London in 2021, making it so relatable to us. The novel vividly describes the city and its history in great detail. Addressing themes of race, opportunity, and class, the story resonated with me, as it reflects the complexities of society. There are intricacies in each character, and while you can let some parts wash over you, the beauty still lies in the details, and every sentence has something to offer.

This novel reads like a modern classic offering future generations a glimpse of 2021 Britain. A rich and thought-provoking book that I look forward to rereading again at some point!

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me awhile to get into this novel but once I did it absorbed me completely. The novel reminded me of John Lanchester’s Capital, another novel of London up to the minute, serious but also comedic, slightly ripped-from-the-headlines but in a good way.

O’Hagan is a Scottish writer and I’m so glad to have discovered him. He is a skillful and elegant writer, I think. He has tremendous mastery of his characters (there’s a list at the start of the book which I found helpful), of the many walks of British life they represent. The story traces bad behavior in all the -isms, money laundering, human trafficking, influence peddling, and more. Yet O’Hagan writes his characters with heart, there are some bad ones but most are caught up in their failings without having quite thought through to the consequences that await them. The book is also centrally concerned with a decent, privileged white man who wills coming to terms with his complicity in the workings of the world and the consequences for those who are not white, not rich, not connected to any levers of power. This experience devastates him in a way that I thought was brilliantly expressed and believable. Just how much reality can any of us admit to consciousness?

Great book, highly recommended, and not a downer despite the foregoing.

[El Ea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Had to stop reading this after 100 pages.

All the characters were so caricatured and contrived that it was impossible to invest in any of them and it was hard to get through one page without cringing.

This book is definitely written by a smug centrist Guardian reader for other smug centrist Guardian readers to all sit around and self-satisfiedly laugh about how all young queer people are the tofu eating wokerati and that only they themselves truly understand the real state of our country and how to resolve its problems!

Outside of these issues, it was also boring as fook!