Mayflies
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan, Faber & Faber
Until now I had read only two of Andrew O’Hagan’s books. His non-fiction The Secret Life (2017), which includes an extraordinary account of how he agreed to ghostwrite Julian Assange’s autobiography. And last year’s much lauded Caledonian Road, which I thoroughly enjoyed, felt like Norman Collins classic London Belongs to Me (1945) on steroids.
So, Mayflies, five years after it was published, three after its TV adaptation. For the first 133 pages, I thought, this is good, I mean, what’s not to like about a description of a boys’ wild weekend away to Manchester to see The Fall, The Smiths and New Order in their pomp. But as far as reminisces of growing up in the west of Scotland in the 1980s and the music scene of that era go it doesn’t hold candle to David Keenan’s This Is Memorial Device (2017), the story of the greatest band that never existed.
But then, O’Hagan’s novel leaps forward thirty years and it’s like being hit in the face with a shovel. Or how I imagine being hit in the face with a shovel might feel. I knew absolutely nothing about Mayflies before I started reading it, and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else, but this is masterful writing.
Recently I’ve been thinking about friendship, and how true friendship is rarely a linear relationship. The relationships that we have with friends might be deep rooted, might stretch back to childhood even, but are likely to ebb and flow over time, sometimes the path peters out. But with true friends, absences of years are of no importance. And, what I’ve found anyway, is that the joy of meeting up after those absences, the shared memories, brings us closer still, helps us survive the ups and downs of life. Seeing each other more frequently wouldn’t make us better friends. Well, perhaps clumsily, I have given away a miniscule part of the theme of Mayflies.
For once the blurb on the cover of the book is well merited. Graham Norton nails it: ‘A requiem for youth and friendship with sentences that stop you in your tracks.’
Best book - of 65 - I’ve read this year.
Still from Mayflies featuring Ashley Jensen and Tony Curran. Credit: BBC and Synchronicity Films