I understand that it was almost certainly the point, but I could not get on with Ben or his narration - the arrogance and negativity wasn’t for me.

Settle in for a little bit of everything.

White City introduces us to Ben, the only son of a rich South Dublin banker who at the start of the novel, we meet in rehab. After he is abruptly cut off from a comfortable and privileged life, following his father’s very public disgrace, Ben gets caught up in drugs and dead-end jobs. Until he runs into an old school friend who wants to cut him in on a scam: a shady property deal in the Balkans. The deal will make Ben rich and, suddenly it looks like he’s enroute back to his old life – rich once more. But we soon realise that not all is as it seems…

White City is a darkly comic read. I enjoyed the narrative style – Ben in rehab, talking to his doctor and reflecting on his life before and the decisions and actions that have led to his current situation. Requested to by the same doctor, he’s written down his life to date in a journal, and the doctor acts almost like a judge in Purgatory deciding on if Ben’s past actions leave him beyond forgiveness or if his soul is worth saving.

There is an obsession in Ben with a reliance on wealth and a view that money will save all of his problems. But even though the upper-middle class are his people, there is still almost a reluctance on his part to being viewed as part of that “gang” and yet he benefits from the wealth and he can’t seem to survive without it.

Power’s writing is concise and accurate – the description of the effects of drug-taking left me almost sweating myself! How he describes the confidence in people that comes with wealth, the lack of awareness. The line, “we inherited the compulsion to make speeches from our fathers”, is probably my favourite from the book.

There is also the examination of men and their internal struggle with being able to show their emotions, wrapped in with the relationships between fathers and sons, and mothers and sons. Ben has been trained since childhood that to show emotions is to almost show weakness. Following a family funeral, he is told as a child by his mother to not be seen crying: “It’s a question of taste”, she tells him.

I also love how Power uses a short scene or paragraph to tell you everything you need to know about a character. Ben, introducing the character of Tynan, describes an interaction with a homeless man and in those three sentences you learn everything you need to know about him.

As I mentioned at the start of this review, White City has a little bit of everything, and the last 100 pages are a rollercoaster with an almost espionage thriller element introduced. It’s a little bit of everything: a human story, character self-reflection, crime, suspense and mystery. Something for everyone.

To listen back to my interview with Kevin for All About Books (the June 3rd episode) you can find that here. (White City by Kevin Power is out now – my thanks to Scribner and Net Galley UK for an advance review copy in exchange for an honest review).

White City is a sometimes funny and at times heartrending story of a young man struggling to redeem himself after his life is destroyed by his family, his friends and his own deeply flawed decisions.

Ben is the epitome of the spoiled rich kid you’d love to hate. A child of a wealthy, South Dublin family, brought up with nothing but the best; the best house, the best school, the best vacations, the best clothes. Now he’s enrolled to do a PhD but with money flowing into his bank account every month, there’s no need to do anything but party.

‘South Dublin’ is more than a geographical area. In Ireland, it’s code for wealth and ostentation — for good schools, expensive homes, the ‘right’ kind of Dublin accent, golf, yachting and rugby clubs.

It’s all just fun and games, except it isn’t. Ben has grown up in an emotional vacuum with a work-obsessed father and an alcoholic mother, neither of whom seem to have any space in their lives for the son. His friends are drink and drug buddies. And then his father is arrested on a €600-million fraud charge and Ben’s money tap is switched off. We enter his life when he’s in rehab, looking back on the past, his family and the friends to whom he became a disposable pawn in a diabolical get-rich-quick scheme.

Anyone who would be even attracted to the scheme proposed by Ben’s former classmate is hardly deserving of much empathy. Eventually, we watch the whole thing go down the toilet. Ben is oblivious, stupefied by drugs and booze. It’s hard to watch.

The narrative is an interesting juxtaposition of Ben-then and Ben-now. The Ben who has been through rehab and gained important insights recounts the Ben who was flailing in a drug-hazed mess. It’s well done and it works. His whole life he has been surrounded by unscrupulous, profiteering frauds. Now he is struggling to see beyond the con and find out who he really is.

White City is not the first satire of its kind, exposing the dirt beneath the exterior gloss of wealth. Unlike many of those novels, however, this one succeeds in making the hero a likeable character, for all his weaknesses.

Note: I deliberately don’t use the word ‘privileged’ to describe Ben’s background. ‘Privilege’ is a term that is becoming increasingly politically loaded. It annoys me that a very useful word is being misappropriated. This book is just one of a zillion reminders that ‘privilege’ does not mean ‘if you’re rich, or come from a wealthy background, you de facto have a charmed life of unalloyed happiness’ (and by extension, no right to complain about anything, ever, so STFU).

My thanks to Netgalley for giving me a free copy of this book. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.

In Ben, Power has created an instant anti-hero. Ben is spoilt, he is lack lustre, he is naïve, he is neglectful of his girlfriend, but so funny and in need of a wake up call. So much of White City with its duality in terms of location (Dublin and Serbia) and time frames seems to mirror the almost split personality of the narrator. Ben despises his banker father, but seems destined to follow in his shoes trusting in his old school friend that the 'steal of the century' is just that. At his core Ben fully understands the path that he is taking and when sober can question the shady negotiations that are taking place, but the call of drugs is so convenient that he takes the route of least resistance. His intellectual aspirations make Ben believe that he is better than those around him, but time will prove him wrong. Think Trainspotting crossed with the Wolf of Wall Street coupled with the warmth of Irish lyricism. A joy to read with laugh out loud wit and excruciating moments of crushing belittlement.

White City is an absolute blast of a book. Set in the upper echelons of Dublin society, it follows Ben - whose banker father is standing trial for fraud - as he tries to find a place for himself. With no money worries and a general lack of ambition, Ben is studying for a PHD which is going nowhere. When his father is arrested and his financial support system is turned off, he has to find a way of making money. As he falls deeper into a spiral of drug use, he gets involved in a business deal in Serbia, which seems to good to be true.
White City is a real page-turner, reminiscent of early Amis, very sharp and funny, but with heart. Power is an astute writer of character and the book is also a sly look at the bust and book of capitalism, not just in Dublin but across the Western world.
Highly recommended.

“Sap, n. Hiberno-English slang. A gauche person; one ungifted with social nous. Also a dupe or mark. The butt of the joke. That one person at the party who just doesn’t get it and never will.”

A post Celtic Tiger story where the generation of unscrupulous profiteers that wreaked havoc on the Irish economy is still around and well. When fathers are sharks, members of a privileged, self-assured clique that has taken full advantage of the economic boom and various loopholes to cunningly divert money for personal enrichment, what are their children going to be like?
We are in South Dublin, an area partly associated with privilege and status. In a recent conversation with fellow Irish writer Niamh Campbell, Kevin Power has explained that he knows this world very well and has remarked that in Ireland class, privilege and social divisions are stark realities and that some structures and places still hold and have a meaning for many.
By reading this riveting novel, one actually gets the impression of cliquey places where privilege replicates itself, where you can make the right connections, of schools where pupils – future leaders -- forge long-lasting friendships and future alliances. This is the picture emerging in White City and the milieu that Kevin Power continues to scrutinize after his successful debut Bad Day in Blackrock. While his first novel was about murder case involving students connected with fictional Brookfield College (albeit loosely inspired by true events), in White City the Lads, former members of the rugby team, have grown up and have started moving their first steps in the world: a world “networked, brainless, awed by money, superdense with artificial pleasures, rigged from above in their favour.”

We first meet 27-year-old Ben in a rehab where he is processing all that brought him there, which he does by writing an angry, self-deprecating confession (Dostroyevsky-style: it is not a coincidence that we find him reading Notes from the Underground at the beginning), with his psychiatrist nagging him and struggling to make him accept responsibility for his actions. We learn that his father is a wealthy investment banker investigated for a major fraud and the family estate has been confiscated. Ejected from a world of privilege and left to his own devices, with an alcoholic mother and fraudulent father as a role model, he drops out of his Ph.D. and gets a) into drugs, b) into a relationship he navigates as if in a fog and c) into a sketchy investment scheme put together by the Lads and their wealthy fathers, a big deal he prefers to honest, low-paying jobs with a view to get his finances sorted. This deal takes them to the Balkans, where ruthless individuals are speculating on the ruins of ex-Yugoslavia. Ben is an interesting character: clueless, arrogant, selfish, a mirror image of those who surround him and a puppet in their hands. He is struggling to take charge of his life, let alone take a moral stance. Ben’s voice is truly engaging, particularly the use the author makes of the distance between the Ben who is writing his memoir, his resistance and his riveting commentary, and the Ben at the time of the facts: Kevin Power’s controlled use of language, humour and irony is excellent, and this allows him to deliver a witty social satire that is biting, ferociously funny and spot-on.

White City is an indictment of Celtic Tiger Ireland’s corrupt establishment and an unflinching portrait of a weak, hyper-protected generation that is utterly unprepared for the responsibilities of life because it has always had it all. And if you think you know where the story is heading (at the beginning I thought this would be more predictable), Kevin Power will baffle your expectations in unique ways. At 450+ pages the novel feels a bit lengthy at times, but still a very engaging, enjoyable read.

I am grateful to the publisher for an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

In White City by Kevin Power the central character Ben is studying for a PhD when faced with a family crisis that sets in motion an unpredictable train of events which ultimately leads to Ben spending a period in a drug rehabilitation institution where he contemplates his predicament under the watchful care of Dr Felix.

Ben's drug-taking in White City supercedes any that I have previously come across as he presents as a parody of middle class entitlement, firmly rooted in the infamous Celtic tiger attitudes that prevailed at that time. His attempts at escaping mundanity are epically detailed in a rich narrative style full of wit and humour. I enjoyed the bold characters and the adventurous plans concocted to get rich quick. This is an outstanding read!