A north London man of letters slides down the social ladder in the novelist’s pitch-perfect tragicomedy of manners whose cast list connects the capital’s many worlds, from a hip-hop-loving hacker to a wealthy activist
There has been hysterical talk, of late, of “no-go areas” in London, districts out of bounds to one community or another. To anyone who moves about the city every day the characterisation is nonsense, an invention of political voices that feed on division. But there is, at the same time, a more private realm in which barriers between communities are being raised: that of storytelling. There is a strain in the culture that wants to put “keep out” signs around the particular experiences of the capital’s varied citizens; to make each community’s tales and histories only theirs to tell.
This is a rare novel, in that hostile landscape policed by cultural studies departments and the 3am stasi on social media, that is temperamentally unafraid of trespass. Andrew O’Hagan goes where his story takes him, deep into the lives of all the communities who live around “the Cally”, the main road that heads north from the capital’s new centre, King’s Cross. The result is a book – it’s hard to resist the word Dickensian – that feels as near an authentic slice of contemporary London life as any packed tube carriage.
