Caledonian Road is set largely on and around the titular thoroughfare, which heads northwards from near London’s King’s Cross station. Its action takes place in the very recent past, in a year’s period between early 2021 (and the ending of major Covid restrictions) and early 2022 (with Russian’s invasion of Ukraine on the imminent horizon). It’s introduced (at least in this pre-release version) by an extensive list of characters, setting the tone for the sprawling, somewhat Dickensian nature of the 600-ish pages to follow. At its undoubted centre, though, is the aging white liberal academic Campbell Flynn, clearly something of a proxy for the author. Having worked his way up in society from humble Glaswegian roots, through a combination of academic achievement and marriage into minor aristocracy, Campbell is a lecturer at UCL, a published art historian (most recently of an acclaimed life of Vermeer), sometime glossy magazine columnist and podcaster. Yet he senses shifting sands in society, and mostly the ones that uphold everything that he holds dears. Campbell, like the liberal intelligentsia he represents, is in crisis. And so, it seems, are his city and his country.

It’s a novel that’s unafraid to stake its claim to be a ‘state of the nation’ epic, and its pages check off just about every concern that’s been dominating the national news agenda for the past few years. Russian interference in global affairs, and the void in financing soon to be left by their sanctioning on the back of Ukraine, looms large over the whole novel, in the shape of the father/son Bykov duo. Immigration is of course present and correct, providing one of the novel’s most shocking moments as well as a more subtle thread highlighting the trials and hardships which Brexit and a fanatically anti-migrant government agenda have driven those who want to make a life in Britain to endure. Being set in London, gang violence is obviously in there to a significant extent too. Institutional corruption underpins all of the above, with Campbell connected by marriage and friendship to various corners of a rotten elite that is both crumbling and seemingly indestructible. The impact of Covid is also interestingly addressed, largely something that’s being brushed away in the timeframe of the novel, but its impact still very much felt by at least two key characters. The rise and fall of Bitcoin is an important plot point. Alongside all of that, we get token nods to questions of gender identity (there’s one non-binary character), celebrity / influencer culture and the Climate Crisis. The latter in particular is given especially cursory attention - perhaps one issue too many to cram in.

If that sounds a lot for one book, however hefty, it certainly is. There’s a lot going on, and a lot of characters to keep track of, many of whom seem to be introduced to exemplify a trend or a side of an argument rather than existing as fully rounded people that you actually care about. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot to admire here. There’s a thriller-like quality to its pacing, mounting tension and general ‘hookiness’. Its threads are also pretty cleverly woven together, in a way that both contributes to its compelling nature as a read and adds to its force as a commentary on the interconnectedness of the many issues we’re facing as a society. It’s also, for a book that crams in so much in terms of ‘issues’, remarkably light in tone (at least until its increasingly dark revelations start to kick in later on) and a breezier read than one might expect.

At times I got a sense that the elaborate character list and endless compounding of issues was a bit of a red herring. Is O’Hagan really inviting us to give equal attention to all of these characters and issue? By the end it felt more like they all existed as representatives of the weight crashing down on its undoubted ‘hero’, Campbell Flynn. The novel is less interested (or at least less successful in dealing with) the state of the nation than it is with the state of one man’s mental health. Of course, Flynn represents more than just himself, he’s clearly emblematic (first) of a certain class of London liberal intellectuals, and more generally of white men of a certain age. Perhaps more broadly, he’s at the eye of the storm when it comes to factions of society that feel that their lifestyle (and perhaps livelihoods and even lives) are under existential threat from the myriad changes massing around them in society. The title also seems deliberately localised. I’m less inclined to believe that O’Hagan sees Caledonian Road as a genuine ‘melting pot’ of all aspects of society, and more that he’s using it for the specifics of what it can represent: an intersection of extremes of society - with Flynn’s ‘Islington elites’ on one side and the shiny, corporate fantasy-lands of Coal Drops Yard and its gigantic tech-bro campuses on the other, both rubbing up against modern-day slum-level housing for migrants, and neglected estates housing second and third generation immigrants. That these are extremes of society rather than ‘representative’ of what everyday Brits experience is something that feels quite crucial to the novel’s interests.

Campbell’s downfall is undoubtedly the most successful part of the book, and therefore (since I rather enjoyed the majority of it) I prefer to look at the other characters more in terms of their impact on him than in their own rights. The ‘gang violence’ side of the story, in particular, made me feel a little uncomfortable in places, reading like slightly cliched observations rather than stories built on or informed by lived experience. But if we’re ultimately viewing these threads in light of their appearance to Campbell’s increasingly fractured mind, then that makes a degree more sense. (Perhaps I’m being overly generous in my reading, but hey, it works for me!) One of the most entertaining threads of the book is Campbell’s foray into self-help fiction, under the ostensibly almost comic title Why Men Weep in Cars, a publication he refuses to put out under his own name and instead sends out into the world in the care of a popular and attractive young actor, with spectacularly disastrous consequences. Its title, initially seeming like a semi-ironic money grab from the seemingly confident and successful academic, comes more and more to seem like a genuine cry for help from someone genuinely wrestling with a crisis in masculinity / status.

It’s a book with a lot to say - it’s full of quotable moments and darkly humorous observations - but it’s not perhaps as outward-facing in scope as it first appears. It doesn’t offer or really look for answers to the grand societal issues it documents, but it does offer a remarkable window on a particularly brief period of time for one man, who sees all around him crumbling and leads himself into despair as a result. Campbell as a character spends much of the novel staring inwardly and into voids: attempting to conjure the fantasy life of a long-dead painter with virtually zero evidence to work from; hiding his own (true?) thoughts behind an actor and a constructed layer of irony; and latterly journeying into the darker realms of the internet. His closest family seem not to know him, and he feels that he hasn’t known the truth of many of his closest associates. If the novel is advocating for anything, it’s perhaps for greater communication, openness and conversation - both between seemingly disparate elements of society and with ourselves.

I’m guessing we’ll be hearing a fair bit about this one in 2024. If nothing else, it’s a highly topical and broad-ranging read from an established and respected author. It’s also, though, a book that I think will provoke a lot of lively conversation and debate, dealing as it does with so many weighty issues with such a light and readable touch. It’s not a perfect book by any stretch, but given its extremely grand ambitions it delivers remarkably well on lots of levels.

(9/10)

'Oh, the progress of guilt and vanity in the average white liberal of today.'

If there was a book that was the physical embodiment of mid-life crisis, Caledonian Road would be it.

There is a lot of social commentary thrown in for good measure; the migrant crisis, covid, Russians, the Royal Family, racism, sexism, nepotism, you name it it's probably in here.

It is an epic tale of great proportion, however, it does feel like there are too many characters with too many POVs for you to really care about any one in particular (although I was shaken by the container scene!). It will definitely win a few awards, especially being the novel that's following Mayflies.

A few of my favourite quotes which may change upon publication:

'Money: an English mystery seldom unravelled.'

'Campbell knew why he'd written it [Why Men Weep in Their Cars]: because he knew he was a thinker in danger of becoming thoughtless.'

'"Society ought to be taken by four corners like a tablecloth and tossed in the air."'

'"You should avoid certain things," the boy said. "Say no to algorithmically generated playlists."'

'Obsessing over failings of speech is a cynical distraction from looking at the system of injustice that really controls our lives. Or: Virtual selfhood is the freedom you never found.'

'"Instead of enveloping ourselves in theory we could tackle actual problems, inequalities. Like the pandemic. It exposed unfairness and it dramatised how unfairness works in this country."'

'"Being toxic and everything, men are always seeking consolation and whatnot. What fools. Men are the same as men have always been, delightful and infuriating."'

'All art is, in a manner of speaking, fake.'

'"Bishop, you know that is bunk. There is more spirit in a thirteenth century book by Thomas Aquinas, fifteen by ten inches, held at Salisbury Cathedral, than in the whole population of Essex today."'

'"For my parents, it was the Holocaust. For my generation, it was nuclear war and AIDS. We only come together as human beings when we realise how eradicable we are."'

'"I don't go in for all that shite. The world's had quite enough of it. Smell is not gendered, and neither is skin. All that 'Skin care for men' bullshit - it's nothing but marketing. 'Cigarettes for women'. 'Novels for black people'. I'm against it. I'm interested in the steps we should take to equalise people."'

'"Maybe that's what postmodernism was in the end: the naming of emotions, as opposed to having it."'

'"Ah, male pride. The poor dears. It's the cause of everything wrong with the world."'

'Never trust a man with tassels on his shoes, that's my motto.'

'"You are a middle-aged white man," they said. "And that's that."
"Strange, isn't it," he replied, "that so many of you, who are multiple, insist that the rest of us be only one thing."'

'He puffed the joint; something would have to give, he knew, emptying his lungs into the trees and feeling a huge sense of loss - the spirit of his life, the self knowledge - yet enjoying the brief resurgence that can come with the illusions of freedom.'

A complex, clever novel about rot at the heart of British society. This is a blisteringly angry expose of corruption at every level. Bleak, cynical and fierce, this has a thread of hope running through it, but it's perilously fragile. It reminded me of Mick Herron's Slough House series but without the humour to leaven it. Brilliant, compelling stuff.

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.