Mayflies
From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Caledonian Road
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4.3 • 104 Ratings
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- £7.49
Publisher Description
'A stunning novel.' Graham Norton
** Includes the first chapter of Andrew O'Hagan's Sunday Times bestselling new novel Caledonian Road **
Winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize
Shortlisted for the Portico Prize
A Guardian, Spectator, Sunday Times, Financial Times and Evening Standard Book of the Year
'Funny, passionate, heartbreaking.' Tracey Thorn
'Life-enhancing.' Scotsman
'Unforgettable.' Cólm Toibín
'Spectacular.' Books of the Year, Spectator
'An incredible book . . . about men and how important friendship can be to men.' Douglas Stuart
'My god this is gorgeous. Wild, wise, wonderful . . . Absolutely brilliant.' Russell T Davies
Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.
In the summer of 1986, James and Tully ignite a friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over, they rush towards a magical weekend of youthful excess in Manchester played out against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded. And there a vow is made: to go at life differently.
Thirty years on, the phone rings. Tully has news.
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.
