Novels that dip into the lives of their characters every few years risk them seeming detached from the world or clumsily inserted into historical events. Drayton and Mackenzie, Alexander Starritt’s third novel about two mismatched friends, enters into their lives at intervals, and falls into neither of those traps.
The novel, in its deft and engaging way, follows James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie from their last days at Oxford in 2004 up to the 2020s. James is an ingenious undergraduate with a glaring lack of social nous, frustrated by life’s apparent inability to provide him with a real challenge. Roland is a gregarious, charmingly inept child of oil money. James finishes top of his class in PPE, Roland graduates with a 2:2. James alienates his high-flying colleagues at McKinsey’s management consultants; Roland teaches in India after a madcap trip to Japan to interview a yakuza.
