Mayflies

Jock Serong is an Australian novelist who has written a couple of good yarns and full points to him. Since I like his writing and I am always interested in how successful writers operate because good knows I have plenty to learn I listened to a podcast featuring Jock from this year’s Bendigo Writers Festival. At least I think it was from there. Now days there are a lot of writer’s festivals in lots of cities and towns around the world and it would be nice to have the money and time to drop into them whether they are in Bendigo or Boston, Sydney or Stockholm.

Actually if time and money were no problem I would be consistently busy travelling the world because it would be not just writer’s festivals but also film festivals like Sundance among the excellent snow in Colorado and sitting in the channel on a luxury boat drinking beer while the world’s bravest surfers push themselves over the edge at big Teahupoo. Then there would be the boat trip to Antarctica and flying to the best part of the planet for the next solar eclipse, not to mention the great art galleries and museums of the world. I have seen some but not all of them by any means. I haven’t been to the Tait or the V&A, or the Getty in LA.

I think Burning Man might be a bit much for me but not SxSW. I think a few days on a large ocean going sailing ship would be good too and a fortnight cruise to the reef breaks in the Maldives, the ones down south away from the crowds. Surfing an El Salvador point break and Jeffrey’s Bay and walking around Cradle Mountain in Tasmania would take up some time. I am not much of a fisherman but I think a week in the Kimberley chasing Barra would fix that. Sleeping in a hotel made of ice, sitting in a treehouse in Scandinavia waiting for the Aurora Borealis, staying in a fair dinkum castle originally built by someone who flirted outrageously with Elizabeth the First and trudging through drizzle and wet heather towards a scotch distillery on the isle of Aran would also be worthy of my time and so far imaginary wealth.

Anyway I have gone down a rabbit hole. Jock at the Bendigo Writer’s Festival, if that was where it was, listed some books that he loved. Some I knew and loved too, some I was blah about and some I hadn’t heard of including one of the newest titles he mentioned. 2020’s Mayflies by Scottish writer Andrew O’Hagan is a cracker and achieves the quality double act of being a coming of age story and a meditation on growing old and middle age. Set in the late 80s in small town Scotland there is plenty of the carry on that you would expect from a group of teenage boys verging on manhood. There are pubs to drink at and parents and dead end jobs to escape and of course great bands like The Smiths to see. The narrator Noodles tells the story with a focus on the gang’s lynchpin, the irrepressible rebellious thinker named Tully and the gang’s planned big weekend in Manchester when their favourite bands are going to perform. There are elements of The Great Gatsby’s structure and some of its themes in the first half of the book as the gang bounce through the days before the concert before heading to Manchester for the show. The main theme though is the nature of male friendship and how males bond.

O’Hagan’s writing is first rate getting the tone, behaviour and conversations just right, full of energy and bullshit, average decisions and early morning come downs. The concert weekend is described brilliantly and anyone who has had the time of their young life at a Livid Festival, Big Day Out, and Byron Blues Festival etc. will recognise and approve. The second half of the book is a major shift. Thirty years have gone by and now there are jobs, wives and children which is different enough but life also now serves Noodles and Tully with a challenge that will test their friendship. O’Hagan’s plotting and his resulting analysis of middle age and its effects on male friendship are just as perceptive and emotional as the first half. I hugely recommended Mayflies so thanks for the heads up Jock.

Six songs to listen to while reading Mayflies.

Panic – The Smiths

Real Gone Kid – Deacon Blue

Age Of Consent –New Order

Totally Wired – The Fall

Transmission – Joy Division

Rip it Up – Orange Juice