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In his newest work, author Andrew O’Hagan delivers a series of eight brief essays initially produced for Radio 4. The style involves reflection, covering a vanished early pal from the housing project where he came of age in the North Ayrshire of the 1970s. He also recalls former colleagues at the London Review of Books, at which O’Hagan made his name in the nineties, as well as his older daughter’s bygone imaginary friend.

Understanding Bonds

The author reflects on the reasons actors, politicians, and Republicans make bad friends, the factors behind why author Colm Tóibín makes such a good one, and how the nature of friendship is shaped by bereavement and the internet.

“What defines a friend in the digital era? … Is it possible to trust someone you’ve never actually spoken to …?”

According to the author, digital friendship is more damaging than losing someone, which maybe isn’t surprising for a writer who compares friendship to “a collection of devotions that spin in the mind like old records”. He worries that folks skip the local pub because they’re occupied shopping online.

Contrasting Family and Friends

Throughout the book, friendship liberates whereas kin restricts. Coming of age with multiple brothers, O’Hagan’s household was a “place of hardships”, a “domain of anxiety”, featuring a distant dad who previously caused their canine purposely removed to rural areas and set loose, lost forever. In grade school, a break was found in tooling around empty lots with Mark, a nearby friend around his years.

“A great friend can summon a new world order, and, best of all, the beginnings perhaps of a new person for you to be, tugged from the constraints of home.”

Subsequently, O’Hagan revises the formula to describe another friend’s fellowship “a ticket to becoming the kind of person you aspired to be”.

Metaphors of Transformation

Symbols of movement and renewal feel potent in a book filled with understood awe at the journey O’Hagan has travelled from childhood. On one page, he works as a stocker during his teens at a nearby supermarket in Ayrshire; on another, he attends a celebration for a new girlfriend at “the designer boutique on Park Avenue”. He is open about being an inveterate name-dropper – clubbing with the Stone Roses, enjoying spirits with the journalist.

The Limits of Disclosure

Although numerous events occurs throughout the book, it’s no tell-all. O’Hagan acknowledges that companionship is rarely just an easy ride, however, he is reserved, at times hesitant, regarding the darker aspects: rejections, confusions, disagreements (“I am acquainted with a well-known performer who invited me to his marriage, but he didn’t even reply when I invited him to mine”).

The degree of openness, of candor, has its limits: even as there’s a brief mention of his aborted attempt to pen Julian Assange’s memoir (the WikiLeaks founder found it hard to accept himself, says O’Hagan, tactfully), he leaves out about his lengthy reported piece for the LRB on the Grenfell Tower fire, notable here particularly since the ensuing furore must have reminded him who his friends were.

A Special Connection

In part due to this, the standout essay here focuses on the celebrated writer Edna O’Brien, who he initially encountered in London in 2009 after leaving Seamus Heaney’s milestone event. After asking her to lunch at the Wolseley in Mayfair (“Perfect … ask for the corner table, Lucian Freud’s table”), it marks the start a long-term connection during which “we turned to each other to finish ideas we couldn’t form by ourselves”, as he uniquely puts it, briefly expanded upon when he subsequently remembers “the mellow compositions we used to listen to while I assisted her with her writings”.

Insightful Glimpses

Among the many celebrities mentioned throughout, she stands alone as granted access into O’Hagan himself. In most of his anecdotes, he’s the guy who is portrayed positively – if as a child getting emotional over Charlotte’s Web as less sensitive kids jeered, or as a hardy reveller who is nevertheless earliest to rise following a big night out – hence interest is sparked slightly when, without context, O’Brien informs the author (seen, uniquely, instead of watching) that she can see he’s “a wounded man who manages it flawlessly and quite convincingly”.

Last Musings

For a memoir – as this collection is – it appears to leave money on the table, at the very least. Ultimately, these memories and musings – in an attractively compact format, ideal for gifting – make you curious regarding a fuller life story O’Hagan could author, should he ever he chooses to do so.