- This novel, published in August last year, is a deliciously cheeky and satirical excoriation of English society. O'Hagan has a gift for wonderful comic writing. It's a scintillating, invigorating, skewering demolition. In fact it's extraordinary. O’Hagan is a genius.
- It's full of interesting characters across the wide social spectrum. And thankfully, it starts with a Cast of Characters, all 59 of them. It reminds the reader who they are and how old they are. I kept flicking back to that every few pages.
- The principal characters are Campbell Flynn, a professor, art historian and writer; his wife Elizabeth; Milo, a brilliant student and activist (‘A young Irish-Ethiopian with a taste for destruction’); Campbell's tenant Mrs Voyles, who is insane and lives in their basement; and some political and corporate high-flyers who are powerful, abusive and corrupt.
- And there's the criminal underworld, mostly Polish and Russian, who run the drugs and illegal immigrant operations. At least they don't pretend to be righteous, unlike the entitled ruling class. There's barely a shred of dignity to any of them.
- The novel is 640 pages long, with many threads and subplots, and heaps of detail. But everything comes together in a very satisfying way towards the end. If society is going to be radically changed, if the anger of ordinary citizens is going to bring about a revolution, if there's going to be justice in the end - then only a small minority will engineer and foresee it.
- One thing I absolutely loved about this novel is the many quotable lines:
Maybe that’s what postmodernism was in the end: the naming of emotion, as opposed to having it.
Like most pacifists, he's unbelievably aggressive. He wants to blame his mother for the state of the planet.
When he raised his head, AJ was staring at him. 'You are a middle aged white man' they said. 'And that's that'. 'Strange isn't it', he replied, 'that so many of you, who are so multiple, insist that the rest of us be only one thing'.
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/
