High and Low by Amanda Craig review – will Britain boil over?

A north London cafe is under siege in a state-of-the-nation satire that brings together the haves and have-nots Britain, muses trainee barrister Xan, was getting “hotter, crueller and angrier”. Amanda Craig’s 10th novel watches as it boils over. Her setting is Prospect Park, a fictional north London suburb caught between gentrification and decline, on the 12th day of Christmas. Outside a hotel housing asylum seekers, protesters and counter-protesters have gathered. In a flat nearby, a man has...

By James Smart