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.