On Friendship

by Andrew O'Hagan

** AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW **


From the bestselling author of Mayflies and Caledonian Road, a heart-enriching celebration of what makes us our friends.


If we are lucky in our lives, our friendships will be rich and varied. They will be shared with those with two legs, with four legs, with whiskers or clean faces; they will come dressed in the simplicity of childhood or the professional attire of adult life; some will span decades, and some will be only fleeting. But the thing they will all have in common is that life is not only unimaginable - but unimagined - without them.


In these gorgeous personal reflections, Andrew O'Hagan explores friendship through music and poetry, memory and history, illuminating the many ways and reasons that people come together, and how our lives are all the better because we do.


Andrew O'Hagan's novel Caledonian Road was a Sunday Times bestseller w/c 31/03/2024

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Biography Memoir, Memoir, Friendship

160 pages, Hardcover

Published October 9, 2025

About the author

Andrew O'Hagan, FRSL (born 1968) is a Scottish novelist and non-fiction author.

He is the author of the novels Our Fathers, Personality, and Be Near Me, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His work has appeared in the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, and The Guardian (UK). In 2003, O’Hagan was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists. He lives in London, England.

Reviews

[Noura · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quietly powerful essay that speaks to the complicated, beautiful, and sometimes bruising nature of long term friendship. What stood out most to me was how O’Hagan writes with tenderness and intellectual sharpness, reflecting on decades of shared experiences.

The writing is elegant without being showy, and the emotional core sneaks up on you. It's not a sentimental piece, but it's deeply felt, especially when he touches on how friendships evolve over time how they stretch, fade, endure, and surprise us. He captures something rare: the dignity of friendship, even when it's strained.

Why 4 stars? For me, some parts meandered a bit, and if you're not already familiar with the literary circles he moves in, a few references can feel distant. But overall, it’s a rewarding, heartfelt read that lingers afterward.
A beautiful reminder that friendship, like literature, is built on time, trust, and the willingness to keep turning up.

[ariana · Rating 4 out of 5]

such carefully crafted prose as per usual! some heartwarming insights - wish he delved a little deeper at times, and wish the essays were ordered more fluidly. still such a delight to hear from him!

[Chloe Winter · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 - Really enjoyed some of the earlier essays. Some beautiful sentiments, particularly about how our friendships shape us and our outlook, but also the retrospective value of those memories and relationships.
The essay lamenting about the horrors since the dawn of the internet and AI was a slog (tell us something we don’t know), but acknowledge I’m not the target generation for that one.

[António Abecasis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eu gostei do ensaio. Achei mais interessante a parte ensaística do que a parte mais autobiográfica. Não concordo com o autor no que toca ao name-dropping, (ele diz que fazer name-dropping pode parecer dodgy mas é o estrume que fertiliza as flores... Mas não me convenceu, o que cheira bem no livro não tem nada que ver com o nível de fama dos seus amigos). Como fã incondicional da amizade, gostei de ler este elogio sincero ao dom que a amizade é. Ainda assim, é uma reflexão curtinha, tive pena que ele não fosse mais fundo.

*********************************************************

I enjoyed the essay. I found the more reflective, essayistic sections more interesting than the more autobiographical parts. I didn’t agree with the author regarding name-dropping (he says it may seem dodgy, but that it’s the manure that fertilises the flowers… but I wasn’t convinced—the things that smell good in the book have nothing to do with how famous his friends are). As an unconditional admirer of friendship, I appreciated this sincere praise of the gift that friendship is. Even so, it’s quite a short reflection—I only wish he had gone deeper.

[Harry Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just a very nice book - nice one Andrew mate

[Anne Deane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book, though I was set up for it by a growing reflection on the nature of friendship over the last 2 years.

My curiosity led me (mostly joyfully, occasionally sadly) through the many strands of this work: early life ideas of friendship, friendship that existed (or didn’t) between our parents, childhood friendships (and playful adventures), youth groups, making friends in a pub, collegiate friendships, animal friends, imaginary friends…

I enjoyed what I experience as O’Hagan’s playfulness, curiosity, sense of humour, generosity of spirit, to say nothing of the writing which was right “up there”.

I’ve underlined much that I will go back to. The book will be a gift on repeat to friends and siblings… and I will continue to reflect exploring writings about female friendships. 9/10

[Rosie Fearn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this narrative of this book was trying to prove something of societal grandeur to its reader, in a way I found slightly insufferable: ‘Time for another name-drop. (Don't forget: name-dropping is to friendship what manure is to roses; it smells dodgy but it helps things grow.)’ I have to whole-heartedly disagree!! I think I would have enjoyed this more in fact if no names were mentioned at all and it focuses solely on the values of that specific friendship. All in all, I think this sets up the assumption O’Hagan would write a pretty spicy autobiography, if he chooses to do so.

[Marnie S · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deja vu of Maggie’s I am I am I am last crimbo limbo. Another reflective book to end the year.

[Niamh · Rating 5 out of 5]

really just quite lovely (even if i could have done without the chapter on the internet)

[jq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Last book of 2025. It feels like the right book to end the year off with.

[Jamie Federbush]

Thanks @Emmy for this book 😄🫶

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

My unforgiveably florid Goodreads update after finishing Chapter 2:

“Stunning. Delightful. Moving. Disarming. Poetically profound without pomp or pretence. Simultaneously vast and weightless and mesmerising...a passing, misty masterpiece, with the inevitable presence of a sunset cloud, no fuss, just that quiet, extravagant blush. His words read like...a friend.”

My mid-stream Judgement was not premature. This brief book of essays is a gem. It’s 140 pages have a golden quality - weighs more on the heart than it does in the hand.

I love O’Hagan’s disarming, honest yet poetic tone. Profound statements don’t have that throat-clearing, “Here I go…” bombast. They just slip by in the course of O’Hagan’s beguiling prose. I find myself half way through the next sentence when I’m stopped in my tracks and have to taking a few steps back to appreciate the beauty and profundity and truth he’s embedded so seamlessly. “I was too young to know I’d never be that young again…” (I still quote one of those gems from “Mayflies” - about how there are lots of things you don’t know when you’re 18 and lots of things you only know when you’re 18. And he does it with restraint, which adds power to the words. It’s the sort of thing that, when miscued (especially by the old) sounds preachy and indignant and opinionated. O’Hagan manages it so masterfully.)

A book of essays sounds a bit esoteric, the sort of thing best left to the artists, potters and academics. NO! Read this, O suburbanite! Join the huddle of friendship around words. It’s intimate, enriching, truthful, probing, uplifting, moving. By meditating on his own experiences of friendship, I found myself drawn, through O’Hagan’s friends, to ponder my own friends. That’s quite a gift - not simply the author’s talent, but what his words give. Like that moment he recounts when, as they drive through Ireland together, his elderly friend, Edna, lays her hand on his.

Another Andrew O’Hagan gem.

[kerry lena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was gifted a physical advanced reader copy of this book by the publisher.

What does friendship mean to you? I had the honour of receiving this beautiful advanced reader copy of On Friendship by Andrew O’Hagan. A beautiful and insightful view into one of life’s most important relationships. This collection was emotional and impactful and well worth the read. Thank you so much to Faber Books for sending this to me.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Really liked the first chapter about childhood friends and the last chapter but didn't really enjoy the in-between.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a short compendium of chapters on various aspects of friendship. Boys United looks at first friendships during childhood. Common Ground covers aspects of friendship and loyalties. Losing Friends covers the endings of friendships in various ways and covers the inspiration behind the characters in his popular novel, Mayflies. Edna is a description of his 15 year friendship with Edna O'Brien, the Irish novelist during her 80's. Friending looks a modern equivalents of friendship arising from digital platforms. Work Mates looks at friendships and bonding at workplaces. Animal Magic covers relationships with our pets. The book ends on Imaginary Friends about the benefits of being able to commune with friends who only exist in one's mind's eye.

The structure of the book is a little disorganised. There is no real flow between the chapters although there is an attempt at dovetailing some of the elements in the final pages. The content can be both illuminating and frustratingly unfocussed. Others may enjoy the chapter on Edna, and this chapter seems to have been centrepiece within the book for the author. But, I found its place here jarring. Surprisingly, as well, given the evident tenderness he held for her, the author's description of what she says and does did not exactly make me warm to her. The chapter seems like an indulgence which does not really add anything to the book that he is writing. I think that the author is aware that his anecdotes about O'Brien and other writers is a bit of an affectation when he says at one point when he accepts that he has included a "good deal about writers" and "We writers imagine that our personal interests are universal truths in disguise. Please forgive."

What I took from this book is that friendship is a very personal thing dependent upon your own personality. This is more a book of personal anecdotes around a theme. When a book is heavily populated by someone else's friends with whom who you do not share knowledge or affinity, it does not have the level of involvement that much of its more beautiful passages and thoughts should inspire.

[Emma Runacres · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did not finish :( Started out lovely, as a book with non-fiction essays about friendship and his experiences in great but accessible writing, but 40 pages in it became really hard for me to follow. I don’t have the book with me and can’t find the quote, but have found a quote from another book that I feel is similar: “How often do we reach for the past’s genial knowledge to meet the unknowables of the present, asking once again that the anterior world might blossom into life and colour the current day”. When breaking my skull open at 11pm I can understand what this means, to reach for the past to understand the present (I think?) but I cannot read more than one sentence like this per two pages before it becomes too hard to read and starts becoming a linguistic puzzle. It completely takes me out of the reading experience. I read the first few pages in the bookshop and liked it, but didn’t realise it would get so literary-serious. I understand of course peiole are looking for this! But for me it’s 3 stars, it was quite inaccesible, maybe I’m too simple, but I cannot read books like this for the whole day and that’s what I was looking for, not an academic essay style brain breaker that I would pick up only on weekends.

[Jonathan Pool · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a thought (and action) provoking collection of essays linked as the title suggests by the concept of friendship. For me story collections are rarely fully satisfying, but here the majority, five from eight, hit the mark and have confirmed in me the need to proactively go out there and up my game in my interactions.

The insightfulness, and humanity on the O’Hagan page is truly excellent. When Andrew O’Hagan speaks in public about this book his ‘performance’ and engagement with his audience takes it on a different level. I had the good fortune to part of his engaged audience this week.
.
O’Hagan is an inveterate name-dropper and he laughs at himself for doing so. The central essay, around Edna O’Brien, is beautifully done and conveys the self-questioning and vulnerability of a national literary great in her last fifteen years up to her death aged ninety-three in 2024. O’Hagan delivered the eulogy at her funeral.

O’Hagan is very strong on the desirability of face-to-face contact in a world of online avatars.
“Brushing against people is a privilege “
He points out the downside of the “work from home” movement.

He talks about the fluctuating nature of friendships. You lose some, but you can also gain new ones, if you are minded to, no matter what your age. And O’Hagan loves and respects “old, and “older” people than he. A most unusual and enlightening trait.
The element of loss of friendship is what pervades the book most strongly. Happily, the reflections on those who have passed is more celebratory than morbid.

For those people who have read O’Hagan’s Mayflies , or seen the TV adaptation, this is a perfect companion. The different nature of male friendship is at the centre of Mayflies, and in this book too. O’Hagan says that while the correspondence received by authors (and for him certainly) is predominantly from female readers (it helps that they read fiction), Mayflies has a not dissimilar tap into the rather more awkward, reserved nature of men, and male feelings.

This is not an easy book to put your hands on in a bookstore. The sellers don’t know how to categorise, and/or where to locate it. The most suitable position would be right next to Mayflies.

[Day Ravenstone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the way Andrew O’Hagan writes, so much. He's such an amazing story teller that this doesn't feel like a non fiction at all, especially with my favourite book by him being written in first person. This was such an emotional ode to friendship. Friendships past, present and future. I was tearing up on page 2. Through the descriptions of long cherished memories, I saw reflections of my own friendships and smiled at the faces that flashed through my mind even though most of them I will never see again. I hope, as I get older, that I end up with the vibrant adult friendships described in this book - and I know, when I was younger, I had those halcyon friendships of childhood.

I adored this book, as I do everything Andrew O’Hagan writes.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

A loving and reassuring tribute to friendship.

‘On Friendship’ is profound in a way that I perhaps I wasn’t prepared for. Life is quite a tragic journey, really. But this is a joyous reminder of the fun to be had along the way. It’s a wonderful book to dip into and become utterly absorbed by. The writing is exceptional, meticulous in its diction, allowing Andrew’s recollections and anecdotes to unfurl with excellently entertaining, and occasionally emotional, results. After all, you can’t choose your family, but the friends we make can define us. This is one of the rarest books: one to which we can all relate.

[Sebas JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up Andrew O’Hagan’s On Friendship on a complete whim at the bookstore counter. It’s a cozy collection of essays exploring friendship from all sorts of angles. O’Hagan brings a lot of genuine warmth to his own stories and reflections. A few parts got a bit too intellectual and hard to engage with, but overall, a lot of it really resonated—especially a poignant piece on loss that had me thinking about a dear friend who’s passed. All in all, a well-written, thoughtful read. Solid 3.5 or 4 stars!

[David Cutler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really just a Christmas stocking filler, presumably using up a few LRB pieces. Not a patch on sme of his work such as Missing or Mayflies that partly mine the same ground. Friends from school, work and modern practices of friending and doesn't even mention Montaigne. Only the Edna O'Brien peice really good and that part memoir.

[Kate Cornfoot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew O’Hagan writes so beautifully about the magic of friendship. We watch films and read novels about romantic love, but one of the greatest loves in a person’s life, friendship, seems to be overlooked in our culture. This book of essays rectifies that. I read this gorgeous book with a smile on my face.

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should be titled "On My Friendships". It's not really an essay on friendship in general, but the author's account of some of his friendships with people that one is supposed to have heard of. It's giving a glimpse into those people's character, but it's not really reflecting on or analyzing friendship much, which is what I would have wanted to read.

[Mai · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful essay about friendship. Bringing you back to the core foundation of friendship and companionship. It made me think about how friendship used to be when I was young and how it is becoming now.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very nice extended essay. It's a deft and surprisingly tender exploration of the topic. The anecdoetes and personal reminiscences lift the slender volume. There's a nice Irish tinge with much of the writing devoted to Seamus Heaney and Edna O'Brien.

[Chris Waterford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book on friendship, mainly based on the author's own life. It gave me a lot to think about---the friends in my life(and the lack of them.) It made me grateful for the friends I have.
8/10

[Cian O’Connell]

Warm and lovely. Advice to namedrop whenever possible will stick with me, as will (with that in mind) round and luminous portraits of Seamus Heaney and Edna O’Brien. Good essays can confirm suspicions you didn’t realise you had, and O’Hagan is a master in that regard.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first book I've read this year that I've finished and then immediately started again. A sort of meditation on the ideas of friendship raised in Mayflies. Brilliant.

[Tiffany]

Recommended by Meech.

[Christopher Walthorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful gem.