Book Clubs and Caledonian Road

Living in a 'state of the nation' novel

This post is about Andrew O’Hagan’s new novel Caledonian Road, (which I did not ‘discover’, and which I have read via the usual route of buying it in a shop). But before I get into that, I want to give a bit of arty journalism insight. We arts hacks love spotting trends. Our antennae for this are always out there. If something is a one-off, we note it in a sort of private memory area, to be summoned if it happens again. If it happens again, it moves up the line. If it happens three times, it is a THING and can justify a piece. That’s sort of the formula.

Every hack wants to think they are the first to discover a THING. I believe I was the first person to interview Mackenzie Crook nationally. In around 1995, Crook was a largely unknown actor who had taken his character Charlie Cheese, the “cheeky chappie from Chorley”, to a tiny venue somewhere at the arse end of the Fringe. I interviewed him for the Today Programme as an example of someone who came up to the Edinburgh Festival without any leg-ups or university society backing. Oh, and in 1986 I wrote a fan letter to Bill Nighy after seeing him playing Edgar in King Lear at the National Theatre. Is Nighy a THING? I think perhaps he might be.

Anyway, around 27 years ago I flogged a piece to The Independent, which was then an actual newspaper, about Book Clubs. I divined that Book Clubs might be a new thing. They were certainly new and exciting, at least enough to excite the editor of the Arts Pages. This was when a) proper newspapers had b), actual arts pages. Happy days.

After a tip-off, I tracked down this emerging phenomenon at Three Brydges Place which is a very arty, rather obscure dining club in an alleyway behind the Colisseum. In an upstairs dining room, six women were sitting around a table discussing Madame Bovary. The familiar iteration of book clubs as an excuse for a massive booze-up at home with a bit of hummus, or with Richard and Judy, was not yet to come. But it would.  

I know exactly when I wrote this piece, because I had my first child shortly after, and you tend to remember the year your children were born. When I was on maternity leave with this child, I thought it would be fun to launch my own club. So I gathered around a bunch of friends, and we all set off into a bright, literary future.

For our first book, we read Magnus Mills’ wonderful, weird Restraint of Beasts, which was partly about building fences. Mills, a London bus driver was something of a literary sensation. The Restraint of Beasts was shortlisted for the Booker. As I was an arts hack at the BBC at the time, I knew ‘people’ in publishing, and was therefore able to invite Mills to come and talk to us. What larks! We held the club in central London at the Groucho Club.

The Book Club thrived, as they do. During the following years, we invited all sorts of authors to the club. One of our members was a producer on the Today Programme, and I can tell you, (just in case you ever doubted it), that the Today programme has tentacles into almost every contact in the country. Hence, visits from writers such as Michael Frayn, Will Self and Sarah Dunant and the wonderful, late Justin Cartwright, and the late James Salter, author of A Sport and A Pastime, which is about love in post war Paris. Read it if you haven’t already.

And also my friend the equally wonderful Rod Liddle, who came with a woman who worked at The Spectator, whom he later married. Oh, the Book Club Marriages! There were plenty of marriages within Book Club. Not between members, but marriages were conducted. Babies were born. And very sadly, people died. Through all these changes, which also included several workplace sackings (and some promotions), and the publication of at least three books within its small membership, our Book Club rattled on. It was a life project. It reflected our lives. We only read contemporary fiction. We met around three times a year.

Eventually we got a bit weary of the Groucho, and it was too expensive. So we moved the Book Club to my family house, which was at the time, in a garden square in Islington, namely Thornhill Square. By this time, I had amassed so many books via the Book Club that I donated a whole load to the library at the secondary school of that very first baby. She was by then a teenager with three younger siblings. Yes, the Book Club lasted a long time. Actually, it outlived than my marriage. Indeed, I believe my ex is still hosting the original book club around the kitchen table at Thornhill Square.

The point of this post is that I very much hope my ex-husband is inviting Andrew O’Hagan over to the next Book Club meeting; indeed, I have sent him a message on What’s App to encourage him to do so. Because the reflection of our lives within the remit of the Book Club has just become a bit tighter. Talk about life reflecting fiction, or the other way round.

Andrew O’Hagan’s ‘state of the nation’ novel, Caledonian Road is set not only nearby, it is set almost exactly at the venue of our Book Club. The hero of the novel, Campbell Flynn, has a lovely job as an art historian, and a lovely wife and two interesting children. And guess what? He lives in a house on Thornhill Square. Just a few doors down from where I lived, the house in which my Book Club was, and still is, held.

I read Caledonian Road yesterday. I read it in one day. The descriptions of Thornhill Square are spot on, right down to the floor plan of the houses which ring it (they are largely all the same). Apart from the fact I don’t think there is a Ginkgo tree dominating the middle of the park in the square, (it’s a London Plane, mate), it is as beautiful in the novel as it is in real life.  

A privileged garden square in London is of course a brilliant springboard for a story, particularly if it is bordered by a low-income, busy strip such as Caledonian Road. The class divide which characterises the UK is never far from view in Islington; in Thornhill Square, it flashes up in your face within about twenty metres. If inequality is the state of the nation, this is it.

When I lived there, I wrote many things inspired by this paradigm. It was impossible not to. In 2016, I wrote a long, sad piece for the Sunday Times Magazine, headlined A Stabbing on My Doorstep. It is the account of the short life and senseless death of Alan Cartwright, a 15 year old who was murdered on the Caledonian Road, exactly where O’Hagan sets scenes in his novel, only a few hundred yards away from where I used to live, and only a few hundred yards from where Alan’s mother probably still lives.  

Caledonian Road is a provocative, gripping read. It’s very good. I don’t know if it will have such huge resonance for readers in Tyneside, or Dorset, or Aberdeen. I hope it does, for the social divide and class affects everyone, and to that end I wondered why O’Hagan had used an actual square, and an actual factually correct terrain, down to references of where the Nisa supermarket is. But if you live in London, and have read it or are reading it, it will be extremely meaningful to you. If you live in Islington, it is probably a must-read.

If you’re interested, Andrew O’Hagan is talking about the book, and signing copies,  on 28^th May at 7.30pm in St Andrew’s Church. Which is, of course in Thornhill Square.