It’s unusual to read a book which explores and celebrates male friendship with all its affectionate joshing, trust and respect. We’re so used to reading about male/female liaison in its many forms and/or about gay love that pure, loving friendship between two men is a refreshing change.
Alexander Starritt’s new novel, which is both moving and absorbing, gives us James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie who meet at Oxford and are very different. James is a focused, super-bright, high achiever who doesn’t always relate comfortably to other people. Roland has people skills, enjoys a good time and messes up his degree. So they hardly notice each other. Later they meet again, find a bond and start an innovative energy company – it has potential, perhaps, but of course investment is an issue and there are many setbacks. Some of the stumbling blocks are driven by phases of differing commitment and loyalty as the novel inches, via its dated sections, towards the Covid years. The complementary relationship between the two of them is like a love affair as they bicker, fall out and rediscover each other repeatedly. Rarely have I read a novel with stronger characterisation.
The minor characters are wonderful too. James’s long-suffering parents, with whom he lives most of the time, are a delight. Both are academics. They take in Roland as a quasi family member and Arthur’s therapeutic, culinary hobby saves the day on more than one occasion. Then there’s Eleni, a rich successful Greek they knew at university who can always be relied on for sensible advice. Alice goes out with James for a while but Roland is easier to be with and, somehow, the two men come round to accommodating the change in dynamic. Some of the characters are real too. It must have been fun to write Drayton and Mackenzie’s meeting with Elon Musk.
Is there a future in tidal energy or hydrolisers? I’m no scientist but Starritt, who has clearly researched it all pretty scrupulously, convinces me that there probably is although there are many heart-in-mouth moments at the beginning, not least when the diver descends to attach the first cable. Starritt is very good at tension and brilliant at naturalistic dialogue. He also excels at the agony of loss because, of course, life is messy – in novels as in reality.
The novel’s epilogue pitches us forward twenty years so we do actually find out how successful it eventually all was. And I cried. Drayton and Mackenzie – the book’s title is, of course, the name of the company – got under my skin in a way that no recent novel has done for a while. It’s intelligent and compelling without ever resorting to shallow literary pretentiousness. I loved it – and wondered why on earth it isn’t on the 2025 Booker Prize longlist.
Next week on Susan’s Bookshelves: Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar by Simon Sebag Montefiore
