Mayflies
A Novel
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
An unforgettable coming-of-age novel that becomes a profound mediation on life, death, and lifelong friendship.
Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.
In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently.
Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news--news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Grab your favourite old records and prepare yourself for a read that will have you busting into laughter and tears. Growing up in blue-collar Scotland during the 1980s, best friends Jimmy and Tully mark their graduation with a hedonistic trip to a Manchester music festival. We loved tagging along for the lifelong friends’ raucous shenanigans, which include stealing drinks off tables and enjoying an epic New Order performance while extremely high. While the first half of Andrew O’Hagan’s gripping novel felt like a gleeful mashup of High Fidelity and Trainspotting, the second half caught us off guard. O’Hagan reintroduces us to his characters decades later to see how their powerful friendship has held up—and why it’s suddenly being tested. Mayflies digs into the nuances of male friendship with breathtaking sensitivity. It’s a beautiful story of two mates celebrating life…and a poignant reminder that the party doesn’t last forever.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
O'Hagan's powerful if disjointed latest (after The Illuminations) explores a friendship between two men over three decades. Narrator Jimmy Collins and Tully Dawson, Glaswegian teenagers on the verge of adulthood in 1986, reconnect 31 years later after one of them is diagnosed with terminal cancer. The first half sets up Jimmy and Tully's backstory, mainly through Jimmy's time spent at Tully's house after his parents abandoned him. As they grow, Jimmy looks forward to college and Tully works as a lathe turner at a factory. The section devoted to 1986 crackles with whip-smart dialogue and references to music and movies, and is buoyed by youthful male energy, notably when Jimmy, Tully, and their rowdy group of mates head to Manchester for an electronic punk festival. The second part, set in 2017, begins with one of the two getting a call from the other, who says he's "totally fucked" with cancer spreading to his lymph nodes, and the men's reunion challenges the limits of their friendship. Here, the tone and energy become somber and muted, starkly contrasting the opening section and offering an unfortunately abrupt transition. Though credibly forceful, this reads like two well-done short novels written under very different influences.
