Wonderful story about the camaraderie of male friends in their 20s. Hilarious discussions of politics, movie lines and song lyrics, mixed with real life angst. After a crazy music fest weekend in Manchester, we jump 30 years into the future. How the lifelong friends deal with being adults when things get complicated and tough decisions have to be made defines their true friendship. We all have that one person we can’t bear to lose. If it’s heartbreaking, confusing and disappointing…”then turn up the music”.

I received a complimentary copy of this book, all opinions are my own.
Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to read this book.

I loved Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan. This was such a beautifully written book with characters that I fell in love with. The description of these Scottish boys’ gallivanting around Manchester as teenagers taking in the eighties punk/rock bands was great and made me wish I was young and back in Liverpool again.
We jump ahead thirty years and life happens. One of the boys is diagnosed with a terminal illness and calls his friend to ask him one last favour. The writer handles this so beautifully. The two friends continue to crack jokes through their pain like the old mates they’ve always been.
This is highly recommended.
Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Jim and Tully, two young men from Britain have a very close ...if non conformist , friendship that extends past the time of youth and into adulthood.......
then everything changes as they have to deal with life and death together and separately

this novel is very busy, non linear and frankly not all it could be. It is difficult to read as it is much the same throughout with little changing except the addition of other characters for a bit or two....

<i>"You are a human being. And that's an unstable condition that ends badly for all of us."</i>

A lifelong friendship, one that starts as kids and continues through adulthood isn't as common as I once thought. I feel lucky to be one of the few that <i>does</i> have such a friend. So in many ways, I connected with this story and this comfort that comes with someone that knows you so well - remembers the ups and downs - even some memories you may have forgotten. It's a special bond and that absolutely resonated on every page for me.

Their story is a sad one, though, because of the things they go through and the struggles they have. I liked that the chapters were a bit broken up, not really read as novel style but almost short stories or broken stories that tell a whole story - like sitting around and reliving memories. Heartbreaking and well written, I appreciated this one.

<i>A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.</i>

Rollicking is a fine word to describe this novel of coming of age in the Scotland of the 1980's. A good read and hard to put down!

This lively, beautifully written roller coaster ride through Scotland in the mid-80’s is a hilarious romp. Main characters James and Tully travel to Manchester for a music extravaganza but spend most of their time drinking too much and disrupting each and every situation they walk into. Sublime.

This novel is about two best friends and their group as they go to Manchester for a music festival and how it defines their later years.

I just couldn't get into the story. I almost never skim and I found myself doing it. The later half of the book was more interesting but because I didn't get invested in the beginning, I had a hard time sympathizing or feeling for the characters. I can see how others could really like it maybe, but it wasn't for me.

2.5/5. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC.

There’s something about Andrew O’Hagan’s way with words that taps very deep wells of emotion in me. This book was no different. I read it in one sitting, laughing out loud in a few places, struggling (fruitlessly) not to cry in others. It’s 1986. Tully and Jimmy are boys (20 and 18) in Ayrshire, a Scottish town gutted by Thatcher, best friends bonded over shared taste in music and movies. Oh, and the fact that Jimmy’s parents split up and left him on his own in council housing, so he practically lives at Tully’s, basking in Tully’s mum’s warmth and kindness. Tully comes up with a plan to go to Manchester to catch a day-long concert featuring many of their beloved bands, so the two lads and a group of other friends catch the bus south. The weekend exceeds their fondest hopes, for the music, the revelry, the camaraderie, and their youthful joy and energy is expertly conveyed. It’s a watershed moment in Tully and Jimmy’s lives, and Tully especially makes big decisions about his future. Enter Part 2, which jumps 30 years into the future. Jimmy and Tully have remained close over the years, and one night the phone rings with important news. I don’t want to say more for fear of spoilers. Suffice to say that Tully asks for his friend’s assistance and support through the most challenging thing he’s ever had to face. O’Hagan is brilliant at conveying profound emotion with great delicacy, sometimes through small details or a felicitous turn of phrase. I was moved over and over by the light shone on friendship and love and what it requires of us. I loved this book more than I can say.

💫 Book Review 💫
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan

The passion and idealism for life, music and most of all friendship runs through these early pages. Tully and James are at the start of their adulthood without thoughts of the distant future. Remember those days? When you thought life was long and the choices seem endless?

But we all know that we grow up and can grow apart from those who we once couldn’t live without.

30 yrs later (and the second half of the book) Tully finds out he’s dying but needs his friend for one last time.

This book is very much a coming of age book with a flip of nostalgia. I will caution anyone reading that there are a couple trigger warnings I’ve put below. I enjoyed it but I felt like it was still missing something. 3.5 stars 🌟

Thank you to Faber & Faber for the gifted copy.


⚠️ cancer, assisted suicide, death

Do you remember those nights in your late teens where you got together with your friends and time stood still for just a little while? The music is playing in the background and providing a soundtrack for your life. Everyone is a little drunk and in love. This is the feeling of the first half of Mayflies. O'Hagan captured young adulthood where everyone is on the brink of growing up, moving away, and creating a new life. The second half of the book is half a lifetime later when the friends are brought together due to one character's life changing situation.

The author narrated his own audiobook and his Scottish accent was too much for me. I also didn’t care for all the dull conversations of this group of boys in the first half of the book. I skimmed the second half of the book, set 30 years later. If I had known ahead of time what it was about I never would have requested the ARC. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

MAYFLIES (2020/21)
By Andrew O’Hagan
Faber and Faber, 207 pages.
★★★★

Nature has its own rules. Mayflies have an average lifespan of 24 hours. In his sixth novel, Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan uses them as a metaphor to remind us that our own moment in the sun is briefer than we imagine when we bask in our youth and the world seems a cool stream into which we can wade at our leisure.

Mayflies centers on youthful male bonding. At is heart is the lifelong friendship between Tully Dawson and James “Noodles” Collins. Collins has just “divorced” his irresponsible parents. He is bright, well-read, and if his mentor English teacher has anything to do with it, bound for a university education. He’s not sure about that. His real mentor is Tully, whose dad Woodbine is a local soccer legend and whose mother Barbara treats Collins as one of her own.

Like most males in the Paisley suburb of Glasgow, Tully and Noodles are mad about football, especially Celtic, which commands fierce loyalty among Irish-heritage Scots such as they. But it’s 1986, and the Scottish working-class is reeling from Margaret Thatcher’s barbaric economic policies, the crushing of a massive miners’ strike, and her assault on unions. Thus, Tully and Noodles have a love greater than football: punk rock. Punk is to them as early rap was to disaffected black youth: a grassroots voice of defiance, rebellion, and rejection of Establishment values. Not since the mid-1960s had Western society experienced such a generation gap.

The first half of Mayflies depicts a drunken, stoned, f-bomb-laced, snogging, spit-soaked, head-bashing road trip to Manchester, England, for a punk rock band fest. It’s a veritable Mohawk-haired Woodstock–the 10th anniversary of punk–headlined by heavyweights such as The Smiths, The Fall, Shop Assistants, and New Order. Everyone is going, even if means walking away from their jobs to be there. Or perhaps, especially if it means thumbing their noses at employers; Tully proudly calls himself a socialist and is of the anarchist end of that spectrum. Tully, Noodles, “Limbo” McCafferty, and “Tibbs” Lennox set off for Manchester, meet some young women, and run into other mates such as Bobby “Dr. Clogs” McCloy and David Hogg. Of their id-driven descent into mayhem O’Hagan writes, “The night seemed to last forever and there was no direction home.”

What they did not realize as they spiked their hair with Coca-Cola was that they were experiencing an ending, not a beginning. The DYI ethos of anarcho-punk soon gave way to polished musicians and the music fragmented into subgenres such as alt-rock, New Wave, post-punk, and pop songs with grungy echoes. In short order, Thatcher was gone and followed by empty Tory suits like John Major and Gordon Brown. Then, Tony Blair took power, but his government often resembled Thatcherism with a human face, not a revival of the Labour Party.

Move the clock forward to 2017 and Jimmy Collins is a tie-wearing successful writer/journalist married to Iona, an in-demand actress/playwright. Tully has kept the faith, but only sort of; he’s Head of English at an East End Glasgow school and playing drums with a band called Kim Philby*. Tully also has terminal cancer and has two things on his plate before he checks out at age 53. He agrees to marry his long-term partner Anna, a Glasgow lawyer, but he makes Jimmy promise he will take him to Switzerland for a doctor-assisted suicide when his suffering becomes intolerable.

The wedding is more posh than Tully wished, but the Manchester lads reassemble. As is often the case, some remain simpatico and some are not. Clogs still insists, “Punk was right…. We are in a constant state of co-exploitation,” but Tibbs seems “made for reading glasses and sharp angles and a bit of grey.” The nuptials go well enough, but the final decision is tougher. Anna is against it and Iona, though supportive of James, observes, “Men have a way of writing themselves into each other’s experience and placing it away from the women they love.”

Mayflies is a powerful book, but it should be noted that its two settings are radically different in tone. Numerous reviewers have commented upon the book’s “dark humor,” but some have confused smart characters and witty banter with comedy. It is more accurate to say that the first half is shot through with angst and the second with pathos. O’Hagan boots us from the world of potty-mouthed anger and into one described with prose that is eloquent, moving, and reflective. Is it too much of a stretch? Since we know nothing of the intervening 40 years, Mayflies occasionally reads as if it is two different novels welded together with a globby bead. I leave it to you to decide if the shift is too jarring, or an unsettling reminder that we are all mayflies.

Rob Weir

* Kim Philby was a British intelligence agent and double agent who fled to the Soviet Union in 1963, when his cover was blown.

I almost DNFed Mayflies at the halfway point, once it was revealed that Tully was dying of cancer, because I was so attached to the characters that the idea of facing Tully's death really felt more devastating than I could bear. But I decided to push through, and I'm so glad I did. While the book is certainly sad, it never feels gratuitous, and it was so moving to see how Tully and James' friendship changed over the years. Overall, I found Mayflies both heartwrenching and hopeful, and I'm glad I read it.

<b>BROMANCE:</b> <i>A true bromance is a special connection that transcends the boundaries of a regular friendship.</i>

Though they came of age in the 80's, a time that pre-dates the term Bromance this is a fitting term for the close friendship between Tully and Jimmy the central characters in <b>Mayflies</b> by Andrew O'Hagan.   These two young Scots boys cemented their friendship in their teens and it endured throughout their adult lives.   As youngsters they were into music, movies and mateship, they had strong opinions about Thatcher and in particular the handling of the National miners strike.   They were smart boys who liked to banter and they loved to party.  Tully, the life of any event was a bit of a charcacter - cheeky -  but he made people feel special and in particular he stood by Jimmy when his family fell apart.  

Fast forward thirty years or so and the friendship is still strong but Tullys health has failed.      Tully calls on Jimmy to promise not to let him suffer.   In the face of such grim news it's understandable that Jimmy would give his word but it soon became apparent that this promise would be incredibly difficult to keep.   

During the  first half of the book I found my interest flagging.    Whilst I liked the scene setting and enjoyed learning about the boys friendship and their families, a lot of the pop culture references were lost on me.    British rock bands, their weekend at a punk rock 10th anniversary music festival, even quotes from movies were unfamiliar to me but offsetting these were the tokens of mateship that helped demonstrate their friendship.      In the second half of the book Tully and Jimmy were in their fifties and this worked so much better for me.    I enjoyed discovering how their lives had panned out, their careers, their relationships and even how their friendship had developed.   During these chapters there was a big focus on facing their own mortality and it challenged readers to consider their own views towards death and dying, and in particular assisted suicide.    The author, Andrew O'Hagan, deftly gave  perspective to this issue and I valued the way it made me think upon the matter from all angles.   

In my view Mayflies was a masculine equivalent of Me Before You by JoJo Moyes.    After being slow to engage I was fully invested by the end of this book.    I don't mind admitting my emotions were worked over pretty thoroughly and I had tears flowing.    

My thanks to the author, to the publishers Penguin Random House Canada, and to Netgalley for the opportunity of reading this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review which it was my pleasure to provide.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC of this book. I really enjoyed this one and read it in one day. Look forward to much more by this author.

Mayflies is a dual timeline literary fiction novel about friendship, grief, and coming of age in Scotland during the 1980s. Told from a single perspective, it follows a male friend group during their raucous journey to a music festival in Manchester and then follows the narrator and his closest friend when disaster strikes a few decades later.

This is primarily a character-driven plot, focusing on Noodles (Jimmy) and Tully and their friendship over the years, as well as what it meant to both of them. There is a lot of poignancy in the novel and there are some wonderful emotional moments captured through the narrative.

The writing is good and captures the capriciousness of youth, as well as the atmosphere of post-punk era Britain. However, I did struggle with some of the wording as my grasp on Scottish vernacular is not that great. There is a lot of local terminology used and that often went over my head. Someone familiar with the dialect and the slang would likely glean much more enjoyment from the writing.

The structure of the novel was easy to follow, but didn't grab my attention as much as I wanted. Though there were absolutely some powerful scenes, the separation of the novel into two very clear eras made it feel a bit disjointed and didn't pull me as tightly into Jimmy and Tully's relationship as I would have liked. The suddenness of the break between the two parts and the longevity between the two time periods made it a little less than smooth in terms of transition and this may have caused me the biggest struggle with becoming immersed in the story.

I can't deny the talent of the writing and the fact that the emotions conveyed do come through the pages. The flow of the novel just didn't work for me as well as I wish it would have.

This will be a good read for those who love literary fiction as well as those who grew up during the 80s and took part in the punk rock scene. It should be able to create an even deeper connection with those who grew up in Great Britain and those with Scottish backgrounds.

* Disclaimer: I received a copy of this novel from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. *

Wow. The Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan is absolutely beautiful, soul crushing, and profound. In 1986, James and Tully meet and embark on a lifelong friendship. In their 30’s Tully is forced to face his own mortality and makes a brave decision to choose the trajectory of his life. This story is a beautifully haunting portrait of deep friendship and love, the choices we make for those we love, and how we support each other even in the most tragic of times. This book will keep me thinking for a long time and definitely a story I will likely reread in the future.

Sincere thank you to NetGalley, Penguin Random House Canada, and McClelland & Stewart for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Mayflies by Andrew O'Hagan is a Scottish coming of age story that is centred on two young men, James and Tully, who are desperate to not repeat the lives of their fathers, each striving to forge his own path. Beginning in 1986 and following the years through 2017, this is a story of friendship and, ultimately, it begs the question of just how far we are willing to go for those we love.

While I did take a while to warm to the narrative style, I did find my stride and soon became fully invested in these characters. This is an emotionally charged read that provides plenty of food for thought as we turn our gaze inward to our own significant relationships.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for providing me with an ARC.

This tale of male friendship was not easy to jump into. The dynamics of male bonding are quite different, both heart-pulling and at times, questionable. I did not get into the storyline right away, but by the middle of the book, I was vested. At the end of the day, we are all "strange weirdos" who make it in life.

‘Mayflies’ follows the story of Tully and James and their friendship. The novel is split into two parts, one taking place in 1986 and the other in 2017. We see the dynamic of their friendship as young adults and how it continues into the future when Tully delivers life-altering news to James.

Tully has got to be one of the most amazing characters I have ever read about. His energy is just so contagious and lively. I truly loved him so much. James as well is such an amazing character and their friendship was so beautiful.

The VERY beginning of the book was extremely promising. We were introduced to Tully’s character and the admiration that James had for his friend. I loved reading about the bits and pieces of their friendship and their interactions together. Despite that though, I found the first half of the book EXTREMELY boring. I don’t know why but I just was not interested at all. In the first half Tully and James as well as a couple of their other friends take a trip to Manchester to attend a music festival or show (or something musical I honestly I have no idea). It was so boring to me and I literally wanted to DNF the book multiple times. The only reason I stayed was because there’d be little snippets of interesting parts or interactions between Tully and James that would keep me hooked for the TINIEST bit longer. Because these interactions were pretty short though, it made it difficult for their friendship to develop as well. I mean we could tell they were close in the way that James talked about Tully and the way they interacted with each other but I wish there was more for us to actually SEE or read about.

Once you get past the first part though then the second part is actually much more interesting. 30 years later Tully and James are still in contact and Tully tells James some super important news. I don’t want to spoil it so I’m not going to say anything else but just know it’s big news. This news leads Tully to make a huge decision. I was a little frustrated at some points in the way that Tully handled this decision in regards to his personal relationships but I definitely understood why he made the decision.

The ending of the book was truly beautiful and I loved it so much.

Rating: 3/5