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

This is a rambling whole of life story of a gay boy with Asian heritage getting a public school scholarship, going to Oxford and living his life as a professional actor.
I just felt the whole book was strong on writing, some paragraphs are a joy to read, but I was never taken with David, so found it hard to enjoy the book. It took me 5 weeks to read, and I seriously considered DNF at 90%.
I’m sure some people are going to love this book, particularly if any lived experiences are similar.

Our Evenings is a story of love, race and sexuality. It follows David Win, a half-Burmese navigating his way through life - from when he was a scholar in a boarding school, then through his career as an actor and then as he gets older.

The writing is beautiful, and I really enjoyed meeting all of the characters as the story went along. It covers a lot of topics such as racism and homophobia, and it makes you think about how cruel some people in this world can really be.

I didn’t connect very well with David as a character meaning I was rather uninterested in his story. I found that the story jumped quite a bit from chapter to chapter, which at times left me quite confused as to what was going on. Certain characters weren’t introduced very well which kept me wondering who they were and what part they played in the story. I feel as though the ending was a bit rushed and came out of nowhere, which made the story feel unfinished.

Overall, I can see why many would enjoy this book, but it just wasn’t for me. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize in 2004 with his fourth novel “The Line of Beauty”, narrowly beating David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas”.

This is his only his seventh novel and the first I have read although I am aware of his reputation – for novels which explore British gay history (including changing societal attitudes) via mainly male characters who are either directly privileged (or often who come into the circle of the privileged) written in a crystalline prose.

And this novel – potentially his last – fits very much into that tradition, although with one main exception – his main protagonist David Win who tells the story in first person recollection, is of mixed English Burmese descent. This choice and the use of his narrator to explore race is something of a departure from an author who has previously I think been known for writing about a milieu and societal position with which he is familiar, but now chooses to add a first party exploration of racial discrimination.

The book opens with a framing chapter – when David, now an elderly but famous actor learns of the death of Mark Hadlow “ethical businessman, a major philanthropist”, father of Giles the notorious minister for Brexit, but also as David’s husband Richard points out “the father you never had”, but other than that is told in a series of what are in effect some thirty-something vignettes from David’s life, beginning from when he is thirteen, a Hadlow scholar at a boarding school, travelling to meet his benefactors at a family farm, together with the bullying Giles (a contemporary at school) and continuing past David’s death to the death of David’s own mother (his father always something of a mystery to him – David seemingly the product of an affair when his mother was working in Burma pre independence).

Key episodes include: a Devon holiday which David spends with his dressmaker mother and her separated and relatively well-off friend Mrs Croft – the reader already expecting she is her mother’s lesbian lover while David is too distracted by the male flesh on show at the beach and by an Italian waiter at the rather down at heel hotel; school year interactions including with Giles; his time at (inevitably) Oxford – which ends in rather abrupt failure in his finals; his time in an experimental radical left-wing touring theatre troupe (part funded via his efforts by the Hadlow’s); his first serious relationship – with Chris a Council Officer; a meeting with an elderly actor which leads to a rather unexpected sexual act; an affair with another actor Hector – a black man who makes David see that the racial prejudice and microaggressions he faces rather pale compared to Hector’s live experience; a school reunion; the death of his mother’s now long acknowledged lover (a relationship that cut her off from the rest of her family); a book festival where his interlocutor is Richard (who then becomes his lover) …….. and all of this against the backdrop of his enduring relationship with Mark Hadlow (and his wife Cara) and his more sporadic and troubled one with Giles.

There was much I liked about the book.

One can see why the author spends years writing his books – as there is a precision to the prose and a weighting to the writing which I would call old fashioned – but only in the sense that it is rare to see it in contemporary literary fiction.

The way in which the novel moves from what starts as a rather cliched boarding school novel and then an equally cliched coming-of-age account, to its real strength – an examination of ageing. A key theme to the novel is a Latin legend on a sundial SENSIM SINE SENSU which Richard translates from Cicero as “slowly, without sensing it, we grow old”.’

I was less keen on some other aspects:

For an author that I thought by reputation was good at indirectly exploring politics – his Booker winning book partially an account of the Thatcher years, Giles rarely rises above Conservative caricature – for example at one stage he is portrayed as a tone-deaf and hopelessly disinterested Arts Minister and a scene where he attends an event where David reads alongside an orchestral accompaniment only to leave early and drown out the performance with the sound of his helicopter taking off for Brussels seems drawn from crude satirical TV.

I would also say that the world of Boarding schools, Oxford and theatre (moving over time from eager left wingers to establishment luvvies) are not ones I really enjoy reading about.

And the framing device which both ends and encompasses the novel (and which I have seen elsewhere described as a “twist”) seemed rather obvious and not really necessary to me.

But overall I can understand the regard in which the novel is held – and would not be surprised or disappointed to see this – possibly his valedictory novel – gain some prize recognition including a third Booker longlisting.

To sum up, this is a compelling and informative story of a biracial, gay man from his childhood through to older age. Alan Hollinghurst is a masterful storyteller who pulls the reader in from the first page. I'll be adding some of his other novels to my ever growing "to read" pile.

Our Evenings is a profoundly moving and beautifully written narrative that captures the complexities of identity, belonging, and the human experience through the eyes of Dave, a half-British, half-Burmese teenager. As he embarks on his journey at a prestigious boarding school on a funded scholarship, readers are introduced to a young man who has lived a life steeped in the challenges of his background. Having grown up with his widowed working-class white mother, Dave enters a world that feels foreign and intimidating, one where his scholarship status renders him vulnerable to the judgments of his more privileged classmates.

The story unfolds with an authentic and poignant exploration of Dave's struggles as he navigates the complexities of friendship, acceptance, and self-worth. The attitudes of many of his classmates serve as a harsh reminder of societal divisions, as they perceive him as "less than" due to his financial background. Despite his intelligence and talent, Dave feels an overwhelming pressure to prove himself, striving to be seen and valued in a world that often overlooks his potential.

The narrative becomes increasingly heart-wrenching as Dave shares his experiences over the years, revealing the barriers he must confront and the inner strength he develops along the way. His journey into the world of theatre provides a canvas for his self-expression and a refuge where he can escape the judgments of his peers. Through his successes on stage, we witness his transformation and resilience, underscoring the importance of pursuing one's passions despite the odds.

http://thesecretbookreview.co.uk

You can see why Hollinghurst is such a well plaudited author. The way we follow the characters as they lived intertwine over the years - two boys from boarding school and wildly differing backgrounds - their lives meet many times over the years. A great read that is touching.

NO SPOILERS:
Our Evenings is my first Alan Hollinghurst and I wonder why! This is an absorbing, fascinating, beautifully written book and a story which in some parts is also my story. I, too, am of mixed heritage and also attended a very fine public school through a scholarship, so prejudice and privilege is a familiar combination.

I was so absorbed in this book, I looked up the Tortured Gesture painting. I listened as I read to Disraeli Gears, I listened to Janacek. I loved the early chapters of Dave’s childhood and time at school and I loved the later chapters. The middle years did not hold the same interest for me, although I did enjoy the gossip like nature of it all. However, Dave’s openness and easy manner makes him a good friend so the final, moving chapters make it all worthwhile.

This wonderful quote:
”Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.”

Fascinating, detailed, insightful. One to contemplate over many an “Ovaltini” of an evening.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the Advanced Review Copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.