Caledonian Road

Andrew O'Hagan

fiction
Book cover for Caledonian Road

The book centres around a young activist/hacker student and his university professor in London who has connections in rather high places. As his famous friends become embroiled in scandals, it seems like the professor is careening towards a downfall of his own.

I found the first half of this book really hard to get into. The author clearly knows what he’s talking about, and the professor inhabits a very different world from us normal people (talking with Dukes and the like) and I think with a bunch of different characters being thrown at you it’s hard to keep up with it all (or even care, if I’m being honest).

It did start to all come together in the second half of the book though, and I do appreciate that rather this just being a book about the student hacker and his underdog story, we get to see the perspective from the other side of the rich and famous. Overall though I didn’t like it enough to recommend it, and hence why I’m giving it a 3.5/5.