DRAYTON AND MACKENZIE

Fresh out of Oxford, two temperamentally opposed classmates become high-rolling players in the field of green energy.

James Drayton is a boy genius who swiftly rises to the top of his class at Oxford, viewing the untold hours he spends on mundane business assignments as tickets to success and fame. Unlike the outgoing but helplessly slacking Roland Mackenzie, James has negative social skills. He lives with his parents, bohemian academics who scoff at his conservatism. Though the privileged boys barely knew each other at university, they develop an ever-deepening love-hate partnership as newbies at McKinsey, a management consulting firm in London where more soul-sucking tasks await them. The worst involve “restructuring” companies in Scotland—firing most of their workers. Driven by James’ vision, they partner with one of the purge victims, an oil company engineer who has the patents for a pioneering underwater turbine, and quit McKinsey with dreams of conquering global warming. As James sees it, they’ll first convert Britain to running on tidal power and then share the technology with the rest of the world. Their path to success is lined with obstacles: Initial underwater experiments in the Orkney islands fail, the 2008 banking scandal puts their fundraising at risk, and Covid-19 rears its head. At its foundation, Starritt’s novel is a throwback to the classic bildungsroman, but the 500-page epic also unfolds as a nuanced satire on the contemporary financial world, with extended appearances from PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. Starritt also stirs in a bit of soap opera by having both protagonists fall for the same woman. While stretches of the book are slightly chilled by a feeling of detachment, the complexities of human relationships in the early 21st century come through in entertaining fashion.

A sweeping novel featuring a pair of memorable protagonists.