CALEDONIAN ROAD

An epic way-we-live-now social novel set in a rapidly corroding London.

Campbell Flynn, the center of O’Hagan’s multivalent satire, is a public intellectual admired for his books on fine art, writing regularly for high-toned opinion and fashion magazines. To make a quick buck, he dashes off a self-help book, Why Men Weep in Their Cars, but to avoid being seen as associated with such déclassé work, he schemes to have an actor pose as its author. From this modest bit of deceit and money-grubbing, O’Hagan spins a heady but credible tale that includes street toughs, immigrants, British aristocrats, political leaders, Russian oligarchs, human traffickers, and the worlds of media, art, and fashion. To educate himself on youth culture and the world beyond his social set, Campbell confers with one of his students, Milo Mangasha, who hacks into Campbell’s private life and unearths a host of seamy associates; various crises and tragedies ensue in the year that follows. O’Hagan’s clearest model for this high-and-low worlds-in-collision tale is Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, and O’Hagan shares Wolfe’s gift for delivering a panoply of unique characters and clearly outlining their motives. The novel has its flaws: O’Hagan’s eagerness to tick the box of every element of contemporary life, from Bitcoin to drill music to deepfakes, demands some forced connections. (Milo’s girlfriend’s brother is connected to a human trafficking scheme; Campbell’s friend is married to a firebrand columnist, and their son is a shrill environmental activist.) The comeuppances are generally predictable, and while Wolfe’s manic style highlighted how greedy and hubristic his characters were, O’Hagan’s approach is more sober and at times drowsier. Still, there’s no doubting the scope of his ambition; when future generations seek to understand post-pandemic Britain, this will be one of the first places they look.

A sprawling critique of so-called polite society.