I really enjoyed this. It’s set in London (mostly), in a later year of the pandemic (2022, probably), and across just over a whole year. The characters are people from the upper-middle to upper classes, and some of the lowest classes in society, including criminals and illegally-trafficked people who have to work for them.

Some of the blurbiness on the cover describes it as a ‘state of the nation’ novel. It doesn’t quite seem like that for me (though I don’t know if I could give you an example of one that is), not least because the main characters exist at a fairly rarified level of society. They are things like academics, authors, journalists, MPs and lords. Or else they’re would-be drill rappers in street gangs. There’s nobody who’s just normal; whatever that means.

There are so many characters that O’Hagan provides a list of them, a dramatis personae, which I approve of.

Anyway, it’s very good, and I read it much faster than I expected to, which is usually a good sign.