GIVEAWAY: 5 copies of Summer Heat: CYPRUS
A big, bold novel of LONDON
16th April 2025
Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan, a big, bold novel of LONDON.
Professor Campbell Flynn, man about town, is the older protagonist in this long novel. He likes hand made shirts, he lives in Islington on Thornhill Square (with a bellicose sitting tenant in the basement), he has a Suffolk country house, and he has married into minor aristocracy, although he has humble roots. He is an art historian, which further allows him access to the hallowed halls of wealth, academia and class.
The novel opens with a Cast of Characters, which always fills me with a degree of terror, as I fear that the people, who populate the pages will invariably be scatter-gunned at the reader and I will lose the plot (maybe in more ways than one). It was, indeed, confusing at times to sort through the characters but generally it was possible to get a sense of London’s who’s who. There are the Russians, wheeling and dealing with dodgy money, there are crime lords, the influencers, the immigrants, the new moneyed classes – in fact the whole social trope weaves its way through the pages, conflated with upper crust mores and manners. From the tailors on Jermyn Street to the Fumoir Bar (which has been going since 1929, apparently) at Claridges, where Campbell smokes a large Oban, and then on to The Wolseley and more. The author clearly relishes wallowing in the expensive establishments of the city, which for an average reader may well prove to be a bit of a turn-off.
The story is set just post Covid, so the characters are adjusting to a changed world, PM Johnson, the ultracrepidarian, is on his way out, the invasion of Ukraine is just revving up. The wider world in which the story is set is carefully drawn.
The novel is written in the style of a Dickensian tome, with incisive social commentary at its heart, ribald ripostes and darkly venal dialogue and actions. It has some charm and amusement in its archly contrived scenes but overall it doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the city’s inhabitants. In many ways it is a treatise on London life.
The trajectory of the story generally felt like eating a rich main course for the duration – too much satiation and not enough in the way of amuse bouches to lighten the overall tenet of the the characters’ interactions. Yes, there is wry humour and observation but at some level my head wanted to engage with the sometimes very clever writing, but my heart just wasn’t in it and, for me, the experience of reading the book landed right in the split between the two.
It is by no means dull, it is educational, it is packed full of satirical observations, but for all that it got so tied up in the grandiose construct, that I often got lost – bored even – as the characters went through their moves. And given it is 600+ pages, it is a lot to ask of the reader to stay with the pompous plot as it weaves its way forward. Somehow, I just didn’t have the mental energy to really fully engage with vagaries of the storyline, the vida loca that is London life and the singularly unpleasant characters, but for many readers the lure of the challenge and the great writing will be an incentive to pick up the novel.
London shines through brilliantly and for that it deserves some enthusiastic accolades.
Tina for the TripFiction Team
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