Family dynamics, romances and even female friendship are all relationships which are widely and regularly explored in literature, so it's refreshing to have a novel entirely dedicated to the dynamics of long lasting male friendship.
Mayflies focuses on the bond between James and his best friend Tully. Their friendship is formed in the 1980s over a mutual love of Indie music, drinking and conversations littered with film references, and lasts until tragedy hits decades later, when Tully receives some devastating news.
The book is essentially split into two parts: their youth, focused mainly on one hedonistic weekend in Manchester, and then their middle age, when bad news draws them back together closer than ever. The focus on their friendship is relentless, to the exclusion of almost all the other characters. While they are part of a wider group of friends and both have wives in later life, these characters never become anything more than 2 dimensional figures, used as background fodder or to move the plot along. While the bond between James and Tully is strong, there seems little actual character development and we get little further than knowing that they loved music as teenagers and have stayed friends since. Beyond knowing the enjoyed getting drunk, I never felt like I knew anything real about them.
There's a lot in theory to recommend this book - a strong sense of nostalgia, an exploration of the quiet and less obvious ways men support, and a bold and unflinching exploration of the ethics of assisted dying. Unfortunately, overall it just falls a bit flat. I wanted so much to enjoy Mayflies but I could never really get to grips with the characters. The first half felt a little self indulgent - an overly long reminiscence of a specific music scene at a specific time. The second half, while more engaging and emotional, just never grabbed me in the way I would expect of such subject matter.
A readable book, but not an exceptional one, I was left wondering whether the book lacked something, or if I was just the wrong age and gender to appreciate this ode to 80s music and male friendship.
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