A heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship.
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.
'An immensely engaging writer: wry and witty, and insightful.' - Sunday Times
'A vivid and meticulous writer.' - Observer
Author bio:
Andrew O'Hagan is Editor-at-Large of the London Review of Books. He has been nominated for the Booker Prize and was voted one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. O'Hagan has won the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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