Caledonian Road
The Sunday Times bestseller
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £11.99
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- £11.99
Publisher Description
'Extraordinary.' Marina Hyde
'An utter joy to read.' Monica Ali
'Majestic.' Independent
'A masterpiece.' John Lanchester
'Addictively enjoyable.' Guardian
'Sensational.' Irish Independent
'Pitch-perfect.' Observer
From the author of Mayflies, an irresistible, unputdownable, state-of-the-nation novel - the story of one man's epic fall from grace.
May 2021. London.
Campbell Flynn - art historian and celebrity intellectual - is entering the empire of middle age. Fuelled by an appetite for admiration and the finer things, controversy and novelty, he doesn't take people half as seriously as they take themselves. Which will prove the first of his huge mistakes.
The second? Milo Mangasha, his beguiling and provocative student. Milo inhabits a more precarious world, has experiences and ideas which excite his teacher. He also has a plan.
Over the course of an incendiary year, a web of crimes and secrets and scandals will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves. But then, he always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Caledonian Road is a remarkably ambitious book, reaching into the lives of a motley line-up of Londoners as their very different paths cross, in order to build a nuanced portrait of modern Britain. Among those we follow are young radicals looking to beat the system, Establishment figures looking to evade accountability (and possibly taxes) as the world shifts around them, and nepo-oligarchs looking to make their mark. The novel is interested in the finer details of each person’s experience, but at its centre is one man's midlife crisis. Author and public intellectual Campbell Flynn cannot reconcile his ideals with the life he has chosen, and the people in it. As scandals erupt around him, Flynn finds himself seeking guidance from a student who offers moral clarity—barely concerned with whether their intentions towards him are benevolent or not. A sprawling exploration of the personal, the political, and the lies we tell ourselves at the point where the two meet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Hagan (Mayflies) centers this wide-ranging novel of ideas on an art critic and professor from a working-class Scottish background. In 2021 London, Campbell Flynn, 52, has achieved cultural prominence but continues to fall short of financial security. Unbeknownst to his aristocratic wife, he's stopped paying his taxes and owes money to an unsavory friend. To raise funds, he writes an anonymous self-help book, which he hopes will be a bestseller. Into this moment of unease steps university student Milo Mangasha, a handsome, blue-collar Black man who schools Flynn on structural racism and the Dark Net and convinces him to convert his book advance to Bitcoin. The story also dips into the perspectives of dozens of other characters, including a Russian oligarch, an illegally trafficked young Polish man, and a men's-rights activist. O'Hagan is at his best in the high society scenes; in one of them, he describes a duchess as resembling "an emaciated meerkat looking for an opportunity to enthuse." Unfortunately, the scenes involving Mangasha's young Black male friends are less convincing. Still, O'Hagan handles the many narrative strands with aplomb. Readers with a taste for the Dickensian will find much to admire.
