A Review of Andrew O’Hagan’s “Mayflies”
The Gift
One recent Sunday morning, I opened up my e-mail to get a surprise message from NetGalley, a Web site where I get to select books for review. Usually, I will make requests to particular publishers for books I might be interested in (and it’s up to them to determine whether I’ll get an Advance Review Copy or galley or not via an e-mail notification), but this time the publisher had contacted me — with a free book. I had never heard of Andrew O’Hagan, even though three of his previous novels had been nominated for the Booker Prize for Fiction. However, the synopsis of his most recent novel, Mayflies — the one that the publisher was gifting me with — was intriguing. It’s a coming-of-age story set partially in the mid-‘80s in Britain during the reign of Margaret Thatcher. However, it’s also a disarming look back at indie rock of the period. It is additionally a novel about friendships, and how they live and thrive even in the face of adversity. I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but in any case, I got a chance to read this short novel without having to put my name in for it, and for that I’m grateful. It’s always a good sign when the publishers start coming to you with gifts, and you don’t have to ask for a particular title.
Essentially, Mayflies is lobbed into two parts. The first half of the book is set in the year 1986. It follows the adventures of the novel’s protagonist, Jimmy (from whose point of view the novel is told), and his friends, including his best friend Tully. They live in a small Scottish town and seek escape from dreary day jobs as youngsters, as well as the responsibilities of growing older. That escape comes with the group of friends score tickets to a festival in Manchester, England, where acts such as New Order and the Smiths would be playing. This part of the novel recounts to trip to Manchester and all of the woolly escapades the group gets themselves into. The second half of the novel, though, is a bit dourer. Set in 2017 during the time following the Brexit vote, the story picks up with Tully discovering that he has developed a case of terminal stomach cancer that has spread to his lymph nodes, and the fall out of that discovery. He gets married, he goes on a trip to Italy, and he looks into assisted dying so that he can die with dignity before the pain advances.
Thus, Mayflies is really like two novels that have little to do with each other thrown into one. However, that doesn’t mean that it is a bad book — though I’m a little lukewarm on it. (Any novel that references not only the Marx Brothers but the American indie rock band Hüsker Dü — two of my most favourite things — can’t be that bad.) What the novel has in spades, particularly in its first half, is atmosphere. You truly get a sense of the Manchester music scene of the ’80s and the references to all sorts of obscure bands come flying fast and furiously — as do references to films, and both James and Tully are fanatics when it comes to the classics. Put it this way, if you know Orange Juice as only a beverage and not also as a British indie rock band of the ’80s, you’re going to have a hard time keeping up with what this novel is going on about.
The other striking thing about the book is that it lacks sentimentality, though you do come to feel sorrow over Tully’s plight. This is a novel about what it’s like to be young and free, and how the best friends in your life are usually the ones you make when you’re a child or a teenager. (Shades of Stand by Me there.) It’s also a volume about growing old with your friends and preparing to watch them die. In a way, Mayflies is an Irish wake of a book (never mind the Scottish characters) as it shows the dignity of raging against the dying of the light. It’s a peculiar book to be sure, and one that is meant to be savoured and thought over. It is a trip that will take you back to the good times in your youth, and get you thinking about your relationships with your friends.
However, there are faults with Mayflies. It’s a short book, so a lot of time is not spent on exposition. That means we’re introduced to characters who don’t show up frequently and could have been cut from the finished product as we don’t get a sense of what they’re like at all. Again, this is also a book that assumes you know a lot about pop culture, particularly British culture, of a certain time — so if you aren’t a child of the 1980s, this is not the novel for you. I also thought that the two halves of the book were sort of at odds with each other in tone — one half is what it means to live, while the other half is about what it means to die.
Still, Mayflies is a curious read. With a bit more editing and fine-tuning, it could have been a truly exceptional book, certainly worthy of the Booker Prize. There’s a kind of humor to the book that’s a bit on the dry side, and you’ll come to enjoy the comings and goings of the main characters. Mayflies might not be perfect, but it is undoubtedly worthy of a look if you’re curious. I’m glad that the publisher reached out to me with this one because one thing can be said about it: it is a gift of a story, one that will have you fondly recalling your youth (even if the political climate wasn’t the greatest at the time, as is the case here), and one that will leave you wanting to hold on to your friends closely. Mayflies is a thoughtful, sometimes challenging, and absorbing read — despite its liabilities — and I’m glad to have discovered it, all thanks to its Canadian publisher.
Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies will be published by McClelland & Stewart on May 18, 2021.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
