With echoes of The Swimming-Pool Library, Hollinghurst’s themes of class and sexuality are given a fresh take in this, another beautifully written novel. Unfortunately the writing does go on a bit at times, and as with Swimming-Pool, I did struggle to stay focused, but maybe Hollinghurst simply isn’t a writer for me. If you’re an old fan, I would definitely recommend!

An interesting tale about a young man who finds himself “on the outside” due to his sexuality and unusual background. The characters are vividly drawn and his thoughts about them and his life compelling.
An unusual storyline

Our Evenings leaves no such doubts. This is the story of Dave Win as he tells it himself, in late middle age, recreating with glowing intensity a sequence of formative or quietly significant episodes across six decades, from the 1960s to the pandemic. He is a boy at school, discovering the possibilities of music and drama, finding his own powers, shaken by encounters with prejudice and aggression, filled with unspoken ecstasies as his sensual attraction to men grows. He is a young actor with a subversive touring company in the 1970s; he is a lover, finding joy with his partners. He is an only son to a single mother, their closeness outlasting all change.

Our Evenings takes the form of a memoir by Dave Win, an actor in his sixties, looking back on his life and his relationship with the wealthy Hadlow family, as he learns of Mark Hadlow’s death.

Dave is a boy from a lower-middle-class background, brought up by his (apparently) widowed British mother after the death of his Burmese father. He is awarded a scholarship to board at a minor public school by the Hadlow family trust. He spends a formative summer holiday with them. Mark is the father. Giles, the son, is an unpleasant bully who also attends the school and is a couple of years older than Dave.

Dave is conscious of the many ways he is an outsider. However, he eventually finds popularity and safety at school through his talent for mimicry and goes on to become an actor. His narration takes us through his life, from school to his career to his romantic relationships.

The most touching parts of Our Evenings are perhaps in Dave's relationship with his mother. She is resourceful and loving and they have a close relationship. However, she tells him little about his father or the time she spent in Burma and much is unspoken between them. That tension between intimacy and secrecy is a recurring theme in the novel.

Despite the framing of the novel, the Hadlows play a relatively small part in the narrative. There is no cathartic confrontation with Giles, who by the time of his father's death is a fairly unpleasant Brexiteer MP. Instead the Hadlows appear at key moments, almost in the background, their wealth and influence unobtrusively changing lives for good or ill. It is one of the subtle ways Hollinghurst powerfully – and at times disturbingly – shows the interaction of the personal and the political in Dave’s life.

Our Evenings is atmospheric and immersive with lovely observations and Dave’s understated humour running through it. Its broad sweep evokes the different periods of recent history and gives it the feel of a nineteenth-century novel. The familiar Hollinghurst themes of class, sexuality, outsiderness and privilege are given new life.
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Copy from NetGalley.

Hollinghurst has delivered a well-paced and beautifully realised narrative of the life of his main character, David.

He employs his signature style - eloquent and elegantly flowing sentences - to describe architecture, nature and art with the same care as he takes over people.

We grow with David, a gay mixed race boy, raised by his mother; seeing the world as it changes over 60 years from his perspective.

His world is deeply intertwined with, and influenced by, another family whose various members play the roles of benefactors and David's antithesis.

It is well paced, and has pleasing echoes of some of the author's other work - it's always nice to recognise a character trait or opinion expressed elsewhere!

An excellent story of how someone and their world changes from the 1960s to the 2020s.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read an advance copy.

Quintessentially British coming of age of a gay, biracial boy chasing happiness. Descriptive and melancholy, just a bit too long.

I’m sad to say that I just couldn’t get on with this book. I struggled to immerse myself in more than a few pages at a time - the fact that I can’t really put my finger on why shows that it is definitely a case of this just not being a book for me.
The story is sweeping, has comedy and tragedy, and the characters are thoughtfully written so, as you would expect from such a talented writer, there is nothing to grasp at to explain why I didn’t really connect with it. It will most definitely have its audience of people who love it, I sadly wasn’t one of them

Being granted this ARC is one of my biggest achievements as a reviewer.
Alan Hollinghurst is one of the greats, and Our Evenings helps prove that.
It is a completely engrossing novel following the life and times of a gay, mixed-race man from the time of his birth in 1948 to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each character is brilliantly written and show their character types and tropes well without being stereotypical.
The plot can drag a little, but this is common with Hollinghurst’s work and allows the novel to read like a lived experience.
The prose is captivating and so remarkably Hollinghurst, and the novel’s ending is handled really well.
Hollinghurst is a true, inspiring novelist.

Thank you to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan/Picador for the ARC.

In my view, Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is an exceptional novel. The prose has a graceful, fluid quality that feels both timeless and enduringly classic, pulling the reader in effortlessly. It’s one of those novels that captures both the intellect and the emotions, and I can confidently say it’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. Truly a brilliant work of literature.

With just 7 novels published in the last 36 years it’s no great achievement for me to say I am completely up to date with Alan Hollinghurst’s fiction, although I have read some of his books more than once. I have always included him when asked my favourite authors and that’s due to the strength of three out of his first four novels, the astonishing debut “The Swimming Pool Library” (1988), “The Folding Star” (1994) and one of the best choices of the Booker panel “The Line Of Beauty” (2004). Since then our relationship soured a little, especially with his last novel “The Sparsholt Affair” (2017) which I rated three stars and called it “too dry and mannered”, a description I also referred back to his previous book “A Stranger’s Child”(2011). However, this 36 year association (I read his first book in the year it was published) means that for me the anticipation towards a new work was huge. “Our Evenings” is Alan Hollinghurst’s best novel in 20 years.
Once the excitement of the opening pages were passed I admit I did feel a little concerned. For an author with such longevity and such a sporadic publishing career Alan Hollinghurst doesn’t deviate greatly in terms of the feel of his novels. In my review of “The Sparsholt Affair” I said; “He’s found his groove and has stuck with it” and with the main character having an older more affluent man in his background acting as a kind of patron and with the structure of touching in at points in the characters' lives over decades I was concerned that it would be wearingly familiar.
But on this occasion he’s got it right. I cared more for the characters and the world he creates feelsmore convincing and after the initial wobble I really began to appreciate the merits of this book. There are very few writers out there writing like Alan Hollinghurst. His books are classy (and often occupied by class), they are learned and rich in cultural and political references, they proceed at a gentle pace - all things which might be deemed slightly unfashionable in the modern publishing world and yet this fits in with the very strongest titles published this year. It is often understated and there’s an air of quiet which surprisingly pervades the work. Scenes are set up with great dramatic potential for characters to react explosively but they rarely do and that oddly, makes it feel convincingly like real life. I found myself anticipating interactions that never actually occur. There’s a calmness implied even in the title and that is reflected throughout most of the novel.
David Win is an Anglo-Burmese actor. We meet him initially in 2016 when he is in his mid-sixties facing up to the death of 94 year old philanthropist Mark Hadlow, who had sponsored David with a public school scholarship which brought him into the orbit of Hadlow’s son, Giles, a school bully who inevitably becomes a government minister. A summer stay with the Hadlows because of this scholarship cements their future associations.
In a first-person narrative David tells his own story of gaining success as an actor with the limitations caused by his skin colour, of his relationships with men and his family consisting of a father he resembles but has never met and a mother who finds her own happiness away from the perceived social norms of the time. For me, the novel really takes off when a fourteen year old David holidays in a hotel in Devon with his mother and her new friend, Esme, in episodes which really reflect what an adolescent who feels an outsider in terms of appearance and sexuality would feel in all its crushing mixture of emotions. The novel’s structure does make it feel episodic with a need to fill in the gaps and some episodes work better than others throughout the novel but towards the end I felt quite moved how invested I had become in these lives and how well they had been depicted. This book will join the three I mentioned above, I feel, in being re-read and enjoyed by myself on future occasions.
“Our Evenings” is published on 3rd October by Picador. Many thanks to the publishers and Netgalley for the advance review copy.

Booker-longlisted writer Alan Hollinghurst returns with another knockout of a book. The novel tells us the story about David Win and how he grew into the middle-aged actor we have in the present day story. In David, we have someone who serves as the outsider who can examine and process the other characters and worlds in which he lives. It's significant that Hollinghurst uses Brexit as a framing device because its political success at the time was in part because it stroked the voters' need to lash out and blame people different from themselves. In "Our Evenings," Hollinghurst makes the case that ideologies like Brexit and the hatred of the other have also harmed people who would be considered sexual others. We see this today where the media and politicians empower bigots through the use of hate rhetoric.

There are other subplots that highlight this dynamic, and it's through Hollinghurst's brilliance as a writer, that we understand how much damage is done to society when so-called "others" are pushed to the margins. "Our Evenings" is another masterpiece from Hollinghurst.

Alan Hollinghurst is fast becoming a go-to writer for state-of-the-nation novels which give expansive views of where we are at through individual life stories. This is a timely read as a mixed-race protagonist navigates the complexities of class over a lifetime and reflects back from the mid-2020s. As is the case with so many novels today I found it over long but this is my only criticism and is more due to the world we live in where our attention span has shortened considerably.

It touches on multiple themes told lovingly and without unnecessary sentimentality. Memorable characters are well portrayed and stay with the reader long after the last page.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC

Another novel by Alan Hollinghurst, another elegant masterwork..

But what type of novel is Our Evenings? It is a first-person lookback at the life of David Win, a half-Burmese, gay actor, from childhood through to middle-age, but it is not a whole-life novel, as made popular and done so brilliantly by William Boyd, as it lacks the unbroken throughline.

Instead, it is a chronological assemblance of seemingly normal yet vitally important episodes of Win’s life which slowly expand to highlight the shortcomings of British society’s contracted attitudes to diverse groups. When the novel starts with Win’s school days the unwitting reader will think “Oh, another novel where the outsider is given passage through more privileged worlds to clumsily show them up.” But this is Alan Hollinghurst and he is incapable of clumsiness.

He writes so precisely and cleanly, yet also so densely that the reader gets pulled back through time into Win’s world and is shocked when they reach the end of a chapter, to find themselves sitting on a bus, or wherever, in 21st century Britian. Which, more than once, was actually a bitter disappointment.

Who knows how Alan Hollinghurst does what he does, this sleight of hand, we just need to be thankful that he is here to do it.

Like all great books,and there is no doubt that “ Our Evenings” is a great book, the latest from Alan Hollinghurst is not without flaws , the greatest of these being the indistinctness of the “villain of the piece”,Giles Hadlow ,and the almost complete absence of sex.

Those authorial choices are deliberate in a book which is in equal measures about growing older and the death of one-nation Toryism. Giles is the epitome of post-Thatcherism, its logical consequence and, although the book ends with the onset of the Covid-era, the poster boy of Tory nemesis.As for the carnal deficit, what else could be expected from a book which references-among many others-the De senectute of Cicero, in which the musings on ageing of a sixty-something are put in the mouth of an eighty-three-year-old?

Episodic, filmique, measured , at times enthralling , at others, mildly tedious, the novel rolls out what David Win wishes us to know of a life lived largely in the shadow of others. This is then of that type of autobiography in which the subject is shadowy, a figure in the mid-distance, a bit-player in his own life. If success in the material sense, and lasting love , elude the younger David, then with maturity come both the realisation of real achievement and the attainment of a happy relationship with a younger man.

My partner of forty-nine years died shortly before I read this. Although slightly younger than David Win, we lived through the same times, our relationship rather like that of David’s mother, Avril and her partner, Esme, neither concealed nor broadcast. The book prodded out memories, of seaside Devon in the sixties, of ambivalently-straight men in the seventies and much else.

If this book does not win a major prize for Alan Hollinghurst, then there is little justice. It has deep and significant historical sweep combined with fine, subtle and supple writing ... and it made this newly-single, elderly-gay reviewer very happy.

My thanks to NetGalley and to Picador for the digital review copy.

Our Evenings, takes us through the life of a colored man in London who is an actor, queer, falls in love easily. The book takes us through the highlights of his life, friends and people he falls in love with along the way.

Our Evenings is David Win's life from a teenager in 60s to him in 60s. A tad too long, lacking in indepth narrative on the society, and living as a queer man through the 60s, 70s and so forth. It is just about David and his life as an actor and lover with people he's known most of his life.

I did not hate it neither did it impress me or wow me.

I enjoyed reading the story of David Win, a boy who wins a scholarship to private school and constantly feels out of place there. We follow him from childhood through to his later years and I enjoyed reading about his relationships and his family life, the challenges of racism and homophobia ever present.
The book is beautifully written, however, I did find myself skimming over parts of it as I found it slightly slow at times. I also found it confusing when characters suddenly appeared and were only introduced or explained halfway through their storyline. However I acknowledge this is a well crafted story which many people will appreciate perhaps more than I did.

It took me a while to get into this, but I felt at ease with this gentle looking back, which starts with talk of an older friends death, and the complicated history of a boy who felt like an outsider, in debt to the same old friend’s generosity of spirit and opportunities bestowed. His intellect gets him into a private school, and he has talents, for music and the arts, making the most of this and letting pass the inevitable taunts and bullying. One of these is the son of the older philanthropist, who it seems is to become his nemesis, and a prominent (and thinly disguised) ToryMP.
David is mixed race, his father’s history forever unknown to him, and he keeps the mystery going at school. He has the stirrings of attraction to young men, but there is a sensitivity towards the subject, and so he has to contend with looking and feeling different. I recognised the subtle bigotry of the small town for those deemed outsiders and he is the object of casual racism, and witness to blatant discrimination and homophobia.
The narrative is related by him in the first person, and leaps headlong through his triumphs and failures in life and love, with great chasms in the telling which we must piece together through later musings. Having said that, it is an extremely easy and fulfilling read. It caters to my own nostalgia over less complicated times, in a lovely and unsentimental telling, with tenderness and sensitivity.

“Our Evenings” is an engrossing novel which follows the life and times of a gay, mixed-race man from the time of his (and my) birth in 1948 to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main characters spring to life from the page, and their “types” are recognisable without being stereotypical. I thought that the plot dragged somewhat during the 1970s and 1980s, but then I realised that matched my own lived experience, and that the author had correctly caught the spirit of those times, as he had for late-60s life at Oxford. The prose is very readable, and the novel’s ending is perfectly handled.

As a fan of some of his other novels, and particularly his beautiful, sensual writing, I enjoyed this greatly- this novel was a treat.

Through the course of the story, as the story unfurls, we learn increasingly of Win, our main character, and the various moments of grandeur and mundanity that go along with being a moderately famous actor. Win's childhood as being so close to the nexus of power and influence was beautifully captured, and the rising tension of the book, that both reflects our realities of history, just slightly morphed, builds to something much more heartfelt than the plot initially suggests.

I received an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Follow the life of Dave who is a mixed race child from a one parent family. . It takes you from his schoolboy days through to being an elderly gentleman . He is gay, mixed race , an actor and author. It tackles the life he led and see how he was shaped by the various influences
Well written