Sometimes it’s nice to read a novel that’s just too much. One stuffed with big characters, big events and big ideas — especially in an age that favours what Joyce Carol Oates calls “wan little husks of autofiction with space between paragraphs to make the book seem longer”.
The Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan has always been interested in looking beyond himself, in not just outlining the world but filling it in, with novels about toxic fame, Afghanistan and even Marilyn Monroe’s dog. He has followed the advice given to him by Norman Mailer, who said a young writer has to “go and meet the world, and stare right into it”.
Caledonian Road, O’Hagan’s most ambitious novel yet, stares right into the world, diving down
