Caledonian Road

I found Mayflies, Andrew O’Hagan’s last novel, such a cosy read about youth, music, and everlasting friendships. Here, in Caledonian Road, he tackles similar themes, but ‘cosiness’ is not an adjective to use for this story. Instead, I would consider ‘provocative’. Through many different characters, O’Hagan gives you a straight appraisal of the mess we are all in by centring the story around one middle-aged white man: Campbell Flynn, an English author, art historian, and commentator. Over the course of a year, family man Flynn finds new connections amid his work and friends, and insights into the means by which power and freedom are sourced.

This is such a complex novel, with an array of so many characters that there is a detailed cast appendix included. The novel is divided into five sections, and each section, much like the excellent television show The Wire or even Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, illustrates how seemingly innocuous acts or friendships have an impact on everyone else. Each decision noted has a sizeable consequence and as Flynn begins to connect the dots, his world starts to epically fall apart.

This grand novel has been written to ask you what privilege means, why policy decisions are so often based in racism, how poverty disrupts, where possessing art is ego, and how money is hidden. And when your number is up …

Andrew O’Hagan is one of the world’s most accomplished and beautiful writers. This remarkable novel runs for over 600 pages and takes a kaleidoscope view of the global situation we are all experiencing. This novel is why we read: to examine how we live, and why. It asks us to be better, and yet also shows us that intention is not enough.