Review by Booklist Review
An editor-at-large of the London Review of Books, O'Hagan (Mayflies, 2020) uses his journalistic skills in this sweeping depiction of contemporary Britain. Campbell Flynn is a highly regarded art historian who befriends a remarkable student, Milo Mangasha. Milo combines studying with hacking the accounts of the wealthy and hanging out with his North London friends who deal drugs and dream of being rappers. Campbell's wife is an aristocrat, while Campbell's eclectic circle draws a full image of London, from Russian money influencing art and the upper classes to the migrants being brought from Vietnam and Poland by the amoral Bozydar. As Campbell falls into a world of dark web purchases and arguing with his irate tenant, Mrs. Voyles, what transpires are a series of tragicomic events mixed with moments of eminently avoidable tragedy. In this Jonathan Franzenesque tale (this is a social realist novel with a moral core), O'Hagan explores the vacuous attempts of the British aristocracy to maintain their wealth and prestige at the expense of others in this kaleidoscopic exploration of post-pandemic and post-Brexit Britain.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
O'Hagan (Mayflies) centers this wide-ranging novel of ideas on an art critic and professor from a working-class Scottish background. In 2021 London, Campbell Flynn, 52, has achieved cultural prominence but continues to fall short of financial security. Unbeknownst to his aristocratic wife, he's stopped paying his taxes and owes money to an unsavory friend. To raise funds, he writes an anonymous self-help book, which he hopes will be a bestseller. Into this moment of unease steps university student Milo Mangasha, a handsome, blue-collar Black man who schools Flynn on structural racism and the Dark Net and convinces him to convert his book advance to Bitcoin. The story also dips into the perspectives of dozens of other characters, including a Russian oligarch, an illegally trafficked young Polish man, and a men's-rights activist. O'Hagan is at his best in the high society scenes; in one of them, he describes a duchess as resembling "an emaciated meerkat looking for an opportunity to enthuse." Unfortunately, the scenes involving Mangasha's young Black male friends are less convincing. Still, O'Hagan handles the many narrative strands with aplomb. Readers with a taste for the Dickensian will find much to admire. (June)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An epic way-we-live-now social novel set in a rapidly corroding London. Campbell Flynn, the center of O'Hagan's multivalent satire, is a public intellectual admired for his books on fine art, writing regularly for high-toned opinion and fashion magazines. To make a quick buck, he dashes off a self-help book, Why Men Weep in Their Cars, but to avoid being seen as associated with such déclassé work, he schemes to have an actor pose as its author. From this modest bit of deceit and money-grubbing, O'Hagan spins a heady but credible tale that includes street toughs, immigrants, British aristocrats, political leaders, Russian oligarchs, human traffickers, and the worlds of media, art, and fashion. To educate himself on youth culture and the world beyond his social set, Campbell confers with one of his students, Milo Mangasha, who hacks into Campbell's private life and unearths a host of seamy associates; various crises and tragedies ensue in the year that follows. O'Hagan's clearest model for this high-and-low worlds-in-collision tale is Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, and O'Hagan shares Wolfe's gift for delivering a panoply of unique characters and clearly outlining their motives. The novel has its flaws: O'Hagan's eagerness to tick the box of every element of contemporary life, from Bitcoin to drill music to deepfakes, demands some forced connections. (Milo's girlfriend's brother is connected to a human trafficking scheme; Campbell's friend is married to a firebrand columnist, and their son is a shrill environmental activist.) The comeuppances are generally predictable, and while Wolfe's manic style highlighted how greedy and hubristic his characters were, O'Hagan's approach is more sober and at times drowsier. Still, there's no doubting the scope of his ambition; when future generations seek to understand post-pandemic Britain, this will be one of the first places they look. A sprawling critique of so-called polite society. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
