Mayflies: From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Caledonian Road

A beautiful ode to lost youth and male friendship written by one of our sharpest observers of modern masculinity. — Douglas Stuart

One of those novels to press into the hands of friends. Beautifully written . . . alert to time, place and the ordinary human . . Wise, poetic . . . I adored this book.

A joyful, warm and heart-filling tribute to the million-petalled flower of male friendship. ― The Times

My god this is gorgeous. Wild, wise, wonderful … Absolutely brilliant. — Russell T. Davies

Starts as a celebration of wild youth and music but then turns into something tender and heartbreaking about friendship and time. I loved it.

The book which has meant most to me this year . . . About the really important things: the transformative power of music and good times, friendship, love and loss. ― Evening Standard 'Books of the Year'

A requiem for youth and friendship with sentences that stop you in your tracks, they are so beautiful and true. — Graham Norton

It's so beautiful . . . The love between friends, between men, is so rarely celebrated. It's gorgeous.

I was pretty much in love with its main character by page four, and I was confident it would be one of my books of the year by about page ten. ― Spectator 'Books of the Year'

Few novelists could have mined such riches from a study of male friendship . . . A plangent masterpiece. ― Mail on Sunday

O'Hagan writes on youth and experience with wit and poignancy – and a terrific soundtrack. ― Financial Times 'Books of the Year'

An intelligent and beautifully written portrait of being young in the 1980s and what makes male friendships tick. ― The Times 'Books of the Year'

On almost every page there is an arresting sentence or idea . . . O'Hagan's achievement is . . . to fill the pages with roaring life, right up to the last kick of the ball. ― Herald

A tight, delicate and soulful novel about the power of enduring friendship and making the best of your life no matter what. ― Sunday Times

A brilliant portrayal of male friendship. — Justine Jordan ― Guardian Books of the Year

A gorgeous novel, full of crisp evocative images. — Ed Caesar ― Guardian Books of the Year

A classic account of the weekend in your youth that became mythical, the time when friendships were formed and bonds were made. He handles time with real skill, as he deals with drink and music and the sheer manic glamour of it all. — New Statesman Books of the Year ― Cólm Toibín

For some reason, this material is rare on the bookshelves, but it's the stuff of life. — Paddy O'Connell ― Radio Times Books of the Year

O'Hagan perfectly captures the changing nature of friendship. ― i Newspaper

A delightful nostalgia trip . . . Affecting and evocative. ― Daily Telegraph

Life-loving and elegiac. ― Observer

I finished Mayflies and immediately wanted to read it again. A beautiful book — Gideon Coe ― BBC Radio 6 Music

O'Hagan has distinguished himself as one of the country's foremost writers . . . Mayflies flits from 1986 to resume in the autumn of 2017. At this point, the brio and charm of the opening develops into arguably O'Hagan's most powerful novel yet . . . It interweaves urban Scotland, disappointing parents, fame, loss and memory into an elegy for the living as well as the dead. An assured and self-contained piece of theatre, in which love of many kinds is tested, Mayflies is rich in allusions, gracefully written, yet vigorous. On almost every page there is an arresting sentence or idea . . . luminous lines that carry literary and emotional weight. This is a book of high artistic ambition, and a reminder, were it needed, of the seriousness that fiction can address. — Rosemary Goring ― Herald

Ebulliently dark . . . One of the pleasures of O'Hagan's writing is that he gives the gravity and absurdity of youth equal weight. The reality of being young is memorably relayed by Tully's wingman Jimmy, a bookish narrator with a nicely ironic turn of phrase . . . This funny and plangent book is shot through with an aching awareness that though our individual existence is no more than "a litany of small tragedies", these tragedies are life-sized to us. It's difficult to think of any other novelist working now who writes about both youth and middle age with such sympathy, and without condescending to either. — Elizabeth Lowry ― Guardian

Brilliant . . . The book could have been subtitled Heyday at the Hacienda so perfectly does it capture the ephemeral nature of clubbing in a soulful story of two lads from smalltown Scotland. ― The National

It reminds us that we recognise the vivid force of youth only in retrospect, when time has begun its work on us . . . I think this book will last beyond these feverish times: it's not just a reminder that culture makes the worst things bearable, but a beautiful example of it in action. — John Self ― The Times

At a time when male friendship is often depicted as superficial, essentially competitive or both, O'Hagan's tenderness feels distinctly refreshing. ― The Spectator

Love and death are art's two great subjects, the inescapable ones. Both are explored here in a delicate, scrupulous prose . . . It's that rarity: a novel about death that is life-enhancing. You can read it in a long afternoon. It will stay with you and you will want to read it again. — Allan Massie ― Scotsman

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone and read Andrew O'Hagan's new novel . . . Mayflies is a lifetime book. — Stephen Romei ― Australian