Drayton and Mackenzie is a stunningly ambitious, immediately engaging and ultimately deeply moving novel both about trying to make your mark on the world, and about how a friendship might be the most important thing in life.

I'll be honest — I struggled with this book at times. For me, it isn’t fast-paced; it’s more of a slow burn. There’s a lot of character development and detailed discussion of the business world, including the financial crisis. It’s a subtle and restrained novel, and many readers will appreciate that. The friendship between the two main characters is central to the story, as is the search for authenticity — in relationships, in work, and in the pursuit of meaning in life. I received an advanced review copy from NetGalley and this is my honest review.

Opening in the early 2000s, Alexander Starritt’s novel follows James Drayton and Roland Mackenzie who bump into each other a couple of years after graduating from Oxford. Driven and intensely competitive, even with himself, James is the affable, indolent Roland’s antithesis. He’s a rising star with McKinsey, eyes set on becoming their youngest partner; Roland joins him, getting in by the skin of his teeth. When the 2008 crash hits, they’re sent off to Aberdeen to prepare employees for a swathe of redundancies in the hard-hit oil and gas industry. As a breather from their relentless delivery of bad news, James suggests a weekend mountaineering which becomes more about drinking than climbing beginning a friendship that will underpin the rest of their lives, and a business partnership in which one will complement the other.
Drayton and Mackenzie is unusual in two respects: the theme of enduring male friendship and its setting in the business world. The latter might sound dull but I found this story of ambition, determination and invention quite riveting. It reminded me of State of Happiness, a Norwegian TV series which told the story of the rise of the oil business and through it, modern Norway. Starritt does something similar through James and Roland whose pursuit of the development of renewable energy charts the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Roland and James’s friendship may seem unlikely, but it’s entirely believable, growing deeper with adversity. It’s a tribute to Starritt’s storytelling skills and characterisation that he’s succeeded in making a story of business and entrepreneurship both gripping and enjoyable.