Winner of the Christopher Isherwood Prize

*** 'Mayflies is one of those novels to press into the hands of friends... I adored this book.' Carol Ann Duffy ***

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

'A life-enhancing novel… It will stay with you and you will want to read it again.' Alan Massie, Scotsman

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

A heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship.

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 euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.