I came across “Mayflies” after it was picked as the December 2023 read for the Sitges Expat Book Club. The blurb sounded promising, as the story of male friendship is not a topic I usually read about. What it ended up being, was a book that I found to be underwhelming. I didn’t enjoy reading it, it took me a bit over two weeks to get through its 280 pages and I decided to not even go to the book club since I couldn’t see any added value in discussing it with other people.

Before going into reading this book, you need to be aware of the fact that one of its two parts will mainly be comprised of:

• A lot of references to music from the 80s (to me, those were bands that I mostly never heard about in my life before);
• A lot of references to movies, mostly from the 80s as well (I also hardly knew any of them);
• And all about a group of guys getting drunk, taking drugs, publicly urinating and using women as objects…

‘It’s not who’s coming, it’s who’s there,’ Tibbs said. ‘Friedrich Engels and Pat Phoenix from Coronation Street.’

‘And Piccadilly records,’ said Limbo.

p. 37

‘What’s England ever done for any of you?’ Tully asked.

‘George Orwell. Factory Records. Brookside,’ Tibbs said.

‘Test Dept,’ Hogg said, opening one of the tins.

‘Hammer Horror,’ Limbo said, ‘and the Magna Carta.’

p. 39

[…] Tibbs obsessed every now and then about what he was calling ‘the plan’ […]. He’d rehearsed the list again and augmented it, but it was sparse of practical contingencies, like eating, sleeping, and washing, and remained heavy on verbs associated with drinking, seeing and finding girls who might be up for a snog.

p. 46

Those are also the three points that would sum up the first half of the book… In that part, it was all about a group of friends going to a concert to Manchester, whereas the second part showed their lives thirty years later. I found it to be a pity because there was potential with quite a few different topics. I haven’t come across many books that would put male friendship in the foreground, which was the case here. Without spoiling too much, I also haven’t come across a novel before that would be taking on the topic of medical aid in dying. The relation to one’s family and parents was touched upon from the male perspective and also the dilemma of finding work after school, trying to find one’s spot in this society. Unfortunately all these ideas got suffocated in the first part of the book. The only reason why I decided not to rate the book with 1/5 ★ was because I didn’t find it to be completely horrible and there were some beautifully phrased passages here and there.

[…] [B]eing young is a kind of warfare in which the great enemy is experience.

p. 3

The past was not only a foreign country, it was a whole other geology.

p. 193

Switzerland […]. It wasn’t winter but there was snow on the mountains and by and by the whiteness gave out to brackish forests and chalets with brown roofs. That neutral country glinted under the sun, the blue roads like veins carrying poor blood to the heart.

p. 251

I found it generally quite difficult to get into the book and I could seldom bring up the motivation to continue reading it, which was why it took me almost three weeks to finish its 270 pages. The bunch of characters that were thrown at you as a reader in the beginning to figure out who was who didn’t help out with that either. I had to reread some parts in order to fully understand what was going on. I also found the pace of the story to be off. The first half endlessly stretched over just about two days, whereas the second half comprised months or even multiple years within it. It felt too rushed, too abrupt and it would have deserved to have more space to unfold upon.

Among the people I recognised from our past, many of their faces were much the same and others were completely blurred by life, as if time was wiping them.

p. 186

As highly as this book was publicly praised, I would have expected much more from it. It was rather disappointing that in order to portray the depth of a friendship between two men, it was decided that its base needed to be solely focused on getting high and drunk together. Reading this was anything but enjoyable, so I’d suggest you to invest your time in some other book instead.

★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

_{Edition: ISBN 978-0-571-27371-3
Faber & Faber, 2021 (first published in 2020)}