A brick of a book, Caledonian Road (2024) is almost Dickensian in scope. Loosely rooted in the eponymous, diverse Islington street, it explores contemporary society from the rich and famous to drug dealing and subversion, all linked by a shimmering web of connections.
Campbell Flynn is a well known art historian with two very different adult children, one of whom, an influencer, has much more fame than his has-been father. Now short of money, Flynn has written a lifestyle book entitled “Why Men Weep in Cars” which is completely different from anything he has done before such as his groundbreaking and widely respected book about Vermeer. He therefore hires an actor to masquerade as author and promote it for him. What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile gullible Flynn befriends/is groomed by one of his students, Milo. He has highly advanced hacking skills, a ruthlessly worthy agenda and many friends in the drug-driven underworld. Among other things, Milo is out to destroy William Byre, an old university friend of Flynn’s now involved in organised crime. Then there’s his brother-in-law who is a wealthy hereditary peer and master of shady dealings and contacts. Flynn is a mere, unwitting conduit. Underneath all this are drug farms in Kent, sweat shops in Leicester, human trafficking gangs, immigration issues, knife crime and much more.
Of course the immaculately interwoven themes are serious in this complex novel but this is, effectively, a satire and it’s often very funny. I loved loaded observations such as “It occurred to Campbell that Candy might weigh less than her necklace” and “Her face was dismanted with make up”.
I also enjoyed the characterisation. Milo’s Polish girlfriend is good as are Mrs Kruppa and Jakub in their various ways. And Flynn’s eccentric mother-in-law who lives aboard an ocean-going yacht is entertaining. In the basement flat of the house on a leafy square which Campbell shares with his patient wife, Elizabeth, is an irascible, impossible, elderly, sitting tenant named Mrs Voyles. She isn’t – in her patrician and devious unreasonableness – a million miles from Alan Bennett’s (real life) Miss Shepherd. A long-term thorn in Flynn’s side, she turns out to be the ultimate trigger.
Warmly recommended to anyone who wants to start the new year with a meaty read and to all who love expansive fiction – and, of course, London which is colourfully, even affectionately, depicted.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: The Complete Uxbridge English Dictionary by Tim Brooke-Taylor, Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden, Jon Naismith & Ian Pattinson
