Open Book - Andrew O'Hagan and Helen Garner

Books and Authors

Alex Clark talks to Andrew O’Hagan about his new book Caledonian Road. Told over the course of a year, Caledonian Road follows art historian and public intellectual Campbell Flynn as a friendship with a young student calls into question the complacency of his much-cherished liberal credentials. With an epic Dickensian cast from drill artists to the wealthy Russian oligarchs in bed with British politicians, the book spools out to encompass a wide canvas of contemporary British life.

Alex also talks to the Australian writer Helen Garner as three books from her back catalogue have been reissued: The Monkey Grip, chronicling a young mother’s life in bohemian Melbourne in the 1970s; This House of Grief, a true crime story of a murderous father; and her most widely renowned novel, The Children’s Bach, which takes us into the lives of a family turned upside down by the forces of sexual desire and the impulse toward freedom.

And, DJ turned novelist, Annie Macmanus shares the Book She'd Never Lend