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Mayflies – Andrew O’Hagen

Mayflies – Andrew O’Hagen

I bought this in Margaret River last year (so I have got to it in less than a year).

Here’s the blurb …

From the widely renowned author Andrew O’Hagan, a heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary 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.

Mayflies is a memorial to youth’s euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.

I loved the first part of this novel – the section set in 1986, I’m a child of the 80s afterall. The second part was also great, but much sadder and therefore less fun. Also, as someone who has had cancer, this was a bit close to home. That’s all personal though – the writing is fabulous. And it was lovely to read about lifelong male friendship.

You can listen to Andrew O’Hagen talking about the novel here.

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