Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life.
In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.
Mayflies is a memorial to youth's euphoria's and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.
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Tully Dawson made himself new to the world, and ripe for the glories of that summer, by showing he was unlike his father. 1 (1986)
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(@FaberBooks, 1 September 2020, ebook, 207 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I'd never heard of the author before but have wanted to read Mayflies since it was featured on an episode of The Big Scottish Book Club a few months ago. It's been on reserve at my library since before Christmas and I'm delighted to finally get a chance to read it. I really loved it. Mayflies should be a bloke's book as it's about the friendship and love shared by a group of lads in the 80's, a bond that still exists thirty years later but somehow it's not. James, Tully and the rest of their gang are easy to identify with and I felt very connected to the characters. Friendship is universal and I loved the way it's the core, the heart of Mayflies. At times I wondered if James was in love with Tully but this is never stated in black and white. James and Tully have stayed in touch over the years but Tully has sad news that will change everything. I sobbed my heart out reading Mayflies.
