Andrew O'Hagan's Mayflies is slight and tender. A slowly moving story about friendship, family, love. Mayflies has a cult-like following and I expect many readers were excited to see what O'Hagan offered up next. Caledonian Road could not be more different than Mayflies. A door-stopper of a book, there's a lot more story here than in Mayflies though with the same sharp lens on human behavior. Caledonia Road is the story of five British families and the way their lives intersect at the points of class and politics. There's a lot going on at times and the reader can get a bit lost in the weeds but O'Hagan carefully brings it all together. I've avoided as many pandemic novels as possible up to this point but Caledonian Road feels more like a Vanity of the Bonfires of the 2020s than a slog of stay-at-home stories that grew out of COVID era.

Readers who love Mayflies may want to manage their expectations about this one. It's a great story but very different from O'Hagan's previous work.

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 <i>Caledonian Road</i> 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: <spoiler>the caricatured bad guys get their comeuppances in highly predictable ways</spoiler>.

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 <i>Caledonian Road</i> just collapses under its own excessive weight.

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

Campbell Flynn is a writer, art professor, podcaster, consultant, fashion commentator, husband, father and friend. His is not a typical Everyman. But still, his is feeling the weight of everyone and everything. Financial stresses as well as societal pressures have Campbell thinking and rethinking everything. This is the type of book that will have your brain reflecting on some of life's bigger issues. Political corruption, wealth & class, revenge, extortion, power, and art. O'Hagan has a gift for clever/witty dialogue which makes every character immediately interesting. This book is 600 pages but read quickly. Now I am left to reflect and absorb the all of this book. The question my mind is currently chewing on is "are good intentions actually ever good?" I will be thinking about this book for a good long time. Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Caledonian Road. 5/5 stars.

This was epic. Deserving of all of the awards. It is difficult to start but once you are in, this novel grips you.

A monumental work, daring in ambition and scope, sometimes successful, sometimes less so, but always entertaining and compelling. I applaud the author for his reach, for the concept of a state-of-the-nation epic that fearlessly confronts the Establishment and Britain’s ghastly upper classes. This was scalding stuff and long overdue. Other aspects, notably the street gangs, seemed inauthentic and beyond the author’s grasp.
But overall, bravo. I hope o’Hagan’s apparent faith in the next generation pays off.

I don't know if I'm not smart enough to understand Caledonian Road or if it's just that boring.

What I liked:
- The cover. I don't want to be snarky, but I want to say something at least slightly positive about this book. I think the cover gives an indication of what this book is intended to be (turning London upside down).

What I didn't like:
- Characters. They were all sort of one-dimensional stereotypes. This books i pitched as satire, but I don't think it leaned enough in that direction. It came off as sincere and pretentious.
- The writing. It was Dickensian...and not in a good way. Why use one word to describe something when you can use 20.
- The dialogue. Again, overly pretentious and not how people talk.
- The story. I would be hard-pressed to tell you what this actually was.
- The pace. This book was almost intentionally plodding/

My Verdict:
I cannot recommend this book. I don't know if it's a reader issue or a book issue, but it just isn't it to me.

I found this book challenging to read, not because of content or themes but because of the writing style and cliches. I do believe there is an audience for this book, but since my reviews are through the lens of a public librarian, I will say that I don't feel that this book would have wide appeal amongst my patrons.

This was an enormously disappointing novel. It's clear that the author has potential as a writer, but he falls short of fulfillment here. Cliche follows cliche for far too many pages. There were so many intriguing elements (power and corruption, class, race) that just weren't explored in a complex or interesting way. I enjoy reading "good" and "bad" characters--meaning that I don't require characters to be relatable or redeemable. But these characters simply weren't interesting, and interest is one thing I do require. I was grateful to receive an e-ARC of this title from NetGalley, so I did finish it, hoping all the while that it would develop and reverse my early opinions. Unfortunately, it did not. I also found some of the narrative choices re: depictions of women and POC verging on the problematic. I do hope others will find more to admire in this novel than I could.

1.5 stars

Caledonian Road was a meticulously written, detailed look at modern British society. The sheer volume of the book initially intimidated me, but I quickly found myself wrapped up in this world. The number of characters also left me a little discombobulated at the beginning (you know you're in for a ride when there's a character glossary!). At first, I wasn't sure who was a passing character versus who I should focus on. Like I said, it didn't take too long to sort through what's what.

We primarily follow Campbell Flynn's journey, who has made a name for himself as an esteemed art historian and biographer. He schmoozes with other society types, and we peek into their conversations about art, academia, the political scene, and so much more. I enjoyed Flynn's story and appreciated the many obstacles and conflicting thoughts he went through over the course of this book.

Even though it does take a little bit to settle into the story, don't let it intimidate you! Caledonian Road is surely a book that will be talked about this summer.

"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.