Glasgow, for life and death

Andrew O’Hagan was until then considered a brilliant representative, rightly distinguished by the magazine grant, of the British of his generation. But nothing more. He was born in 1968, he is Scottish, he has been awarded many prestigious prizes, but he had never until then made the applause meter explode. And none of his novels exceeded a very honest average and were unforgettable.

But, with The Ephemerals (Mayflies2020), he is moving up a gear. It is Anne-Marie Métailié, in her Scottish collection, who is publishing it. This is no coincidence. We know her taste for Scotland – and her knowledge of the country. And The Ephemerals is the most Scottish of O’Hagan’s novels, as well as the richest and most subtle.

Scotland is no longer a simple backdrop: it is the soul and geography of the book. Because the novel takes place in Glasgow, in the heart of the dark Scotland of the mining country, with a distant view of the Aran Islands, and the characters, even if they are settled in London…