I had read lots of glowing reviews of this book and planned to buy it when it came out in paperback. As it happened I received the hardback for Christmas, all 600 pages, not then a book to read in bed, fall asleep and drop on one’s face! That was not going to happen actually as it is beautifully written and would not be at all likely to send me to sleep.
Critics call this book a ‘state of the nation’ novel and I wasn’t quite sure I knew what this meant. Having happily devoured all this tome in a very short time, maybe I now have a clearer understanding. This is a story of England, showing how our society exists today. As most of us live within our personal comfort zones, our own protected bubble, the extremities are unknown ground, certainly to me, and that is what this book shows the reader.
The Caledonian Road, the Cally to many residents, runs from Kings Cross in London, northwards for over a mile to Finsbury Park. It is a dividing line between very different lives. On one side lie the Islington Garden Squares, houses valued at several million pounds each, interspersed with some social housing flats. On the other side of the Caledonian Road are large council estates with a complete lack of good infrastructure and useful retail units. It is simplistic to say the ‘haves’ on one side and the ‘have nots’ on the other but that does offer the basic picture. Andrew O’Hagan explores what happens when the two contrasting ways of life meet and get tangled up.
Part of my initial attraction to this book came from the fact that I am very familiar with the immediate area. Both my daughters lived in the Angel, Islington for several years and I have spent many hours pushing small grandchildren in pushchairs around those garden squares. Incidentally, as I was doing so I was always looking out for my favourite author: Penelope Lively, who I knew lived in one of these grand squares. Sadly, I never saw her and I never found out exactly where she lived!
So, the principal character Campbell Flynn lives in number 68 Thornhill Square. This is a real house! Do the owners mind being fictionalised? Were they asked? He is a professor of English Literature and a writer. Financially he is overstretched and without explicitly meaning to he becomes involved with those on the other side of the Caledonian Road. Finding money from less than traditional routes means he becomes involved in crypto currency and bitcoin as he gradually becomes complicit in dealings concerned with modern slavery, drugs and people trafficking.
I really have no experience or knowledge of the lifestyles of any of the characters involved. They are living at the extremes, whilst I am cosily (ignorantly?) cushioned in the middle. However, I greedily read this story, compulsively turning the pages and totally unsure of how it was going to end.
This is an important piece of fiction, written by a highly intelligent and skilled author. I can’t believe that you wouldn’t find it interesting.