Drayton and Mackenzie by Alexander Starritt review: 'a richly enjoyable novel of ideas'
Ambitious in terms of both scale and scope, this new novel from Alexander Starritt is so good it invites a second reading, writes Allan Massie
I haven't read Alexander Starritt's first two novels, both of which have won prizes, but Drayton and Mackenzie will surely win more. Starritt was born in Scotland, but I have no idea whether he thinks of himself as a Scot. Since a considerable part of this new novel is set in Aberdeen at a time when the oil industry was in trouble after the financial crisis, he may well do so. Certainly he writes of Aberdeen with interest and authority. This novel of Victorian length and ambition has something in common with Andrew O'Hagan's Caledonian Road; certainly it is every bit as ambitious.
Drayton and Mackenzie sounds like a Department Store, but - another Victorian touch - these are the names of the two heroes. They meet first at the same Oxford College, rowing in the same boat in their first year there. James Drayton is a high-flier, the cleverest man of his year. Roland Mackenzie is lazy and disorganised. In my time at Cambridge someone like Drayton would have become an academic, or gone to the Bar with the intention of heading for Parliament and ministerial office.
Drayton joins McKinsey, the American management consultancy company, eve though he's not sure it is worthy of his talent or ambition. Roland, meanwhile, is a drifter with a poor degree. He goes to India and teaches in a very small school.
Some years later they meet in a London pub. What Roland says of Indian education interests James: there's somenthing he can get his teeth into. He recruits Roland for his team, and keeps him though Roland is lazy and incompetent. They are very different, yet bound increasingly together.
James still lives with his parents, and Starritt is good on family life. James and Roland don't quite share girlfriends, but come close to doing so. Then comes the financial crash. James is sent to Aberdeen where over-manned oil companies are in trouble, and takes Roland with him. It's a ruthless time. Their job is to sack people. It's brutal, but has to be done. For me, the Aberdeen section is the best part of the novel - capitalism in crisis, red in tooth and claw. Yet it is Aberdeen and a meeting with an engineer who has a vision of how to revive the oil boom that, for the first time, gives James the sort of challenge he has been looking for. He keeps Roland with him - Roland, he now knows, has qualities he lacks.
That's enough of the plot, though there's still a long way to go. This is a novel rich in detail, rich too in background, the parents and extended families of both men being brought convincingly to life. Starritt contrives to blend private life, family matters, girlfriends and parties with a serious and often disturbing picture of the times we live in. Combining public and private life is a challenge to any novelist, but Starritt meets it triumphantly.
At the novel’s heart is the relationship between the two men. I suppose their unlikely friendship is what is now called a bromance; an unlikely but persuasive one. It is also a picture of the times in which we live. Anthony Trollope called one of his finest novels The Way We Live Now, and this would have been a suitable title for Starritt's novel too.
For a long time, the best literary novels have fought shy of public life, confining themselves to slim and elegant personal stories - on this side of the Atlantic anyway. Starritt, however, has boldly tackled a big subject, and if there are passages which you think might have been pruned, the novel's vitality is such that you are swept along by the story. It is a novel of ideas which is also richly enjoyable; a novel that demands more than a weekly reviewer can offer, for it calls for a second reading and a slow one if its riches are to be fully grasped.
Drayton and Mackenzie, by Alexander Starritt, Swift, £16.99
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