I was given Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan for my birthday by my friend Pam. As a former resident of an adjacent part of north London I knew I was going to like it. The cast of characters is so extensive that there’s a helpful two-page guide at the beginning, and whilst they initially seem to live very different lives in the same geographical area, it’s not long before their seemingly separate worlds begin to collide.
The main protagonist is Campbell Flynn, a middle aged art historian and celebrity academic who lives on a leafy square in Barnsbury with his wife Elizabeth. Elizabeth uses her skills as a therapist to gain deep insight into Campbell’s soul, which I imagine could be a bit trying to be on the receiving end of, and watches him without much intervention as he dissolves in front of her. I wasn’t much troubled by that on his behalf, given the solidity of his place in the world at the beginning of the novel and his lack of attention to that solidity. The cracks begin to show when he makes friends with one of his students, Milo, who gently pulls the strings of the midlife crisis that will unravel him.
This crisis is helped by some dubious long-time friends to which Campbell has unquestioning loyalty to. When their lives also begin to fall apart, he finds himself swept along in a dawning realisation that everything he previously believed about people and about the world was wrong. As London recovers from the first wave of Covid, the city is stripped bare, to the inequality, corruption, raw capitalism and privilege that Campbell has so long taken for granted.
The pace marches relentlessly on to what must surely be Campbell’s downfall, as his student meticulously and beautifully hacks his way through every injustice he finds, redirecting his direct debits, leaking confidential material to journalists, sending messages to other people’s phones and making sure that everyone who deserves it gets their comeuppance. This is a delicious tour de force and I enjoyed every minute of it.