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Our Evenings is a 2024 novel by Alan Hollinghurst.

Plot

Prologue

David Win, a late middle-aged actor, and his husband, Richard, listen to news of the death of David's benefactor, Mark Hadlow. David then visits Cara, Mark's elderly widow.

Adolescence

The rest of the novel traces David's life, from his adolescence in 1960s England to his death in near contemporary times. David is bi-racial. His mother, Avril, is a skilled dressmaker with her own business; David and Avril live together and are emotionally close. David's father is Burmese; he is absent: a mysterious figure, whom Avril rarely mentions.

Avril meets Esme Croft, a well-to-do divorcée. Esme is Avril's client at first. Later, Esme invests in Avril's business, and the two women develop a close personal relationship. Esme, Avril and David go on holiday to Devon, where Dave becomes increasingly aware of his attraction to men. Esme and Avril eventually move in together, although the true nature of their relationship remains long unstated.

David attends Bampton, a public school, on a scholarship funded by the Hadlows. Dave visits the Hadlows at Woolpeck, a farm owned by Cara's family. David's admiration for Mark and Cara grows, and he is fascinated by the house and its surrounding countryside. He is also bullied by Mark and Cara's son, Giles. At the end of his visit, David demonstrates his acting ability, rehearsing a scene with Mark's mother Elise, a famous French actress.

Oxford

After Bampton, David attends the University of Oxford. He initially does well academically, but he becomes increasingly absorbed by acting. David receives a positive review in The Times for playing Mosca in Volpone. A few weeks later, he walks out of his final exams, feeling unprepared. Dave's last few weeks at Oxford are further complicated by his coming out, marked by an awkward, unrequited crush on another student. Back home, reeling from his experiences at Oxford, Dave comes out to Avril and Esme.

Adulthood

After Oxford, David remains committed to acting. He joins an experimental theatre company, which is eventually supported by the Hadlows. Dave has his first relationship with Chris, a man ten years his senior; their relationship is intensely passionate but also "missing" something deeper. Dave breaks it off to live with Hector, another actor. Both Dave and Hector, who is black, experience English racism, although Hector appears to suffer from it more. Hector breaks up with David to pursue his career elsewhere.

After much hard work, David develops into a skilled actor and speaker. He writes a book, and while promoting it at a literary festival, he meets Richard, who interviews him. David and Richard become lovers and later marry. With Richard, Dave experiences an emotional stability he didn't find in his earlier relationships.

David experiences the death of Esme, Mark, and eventually, most painfully, his mother, Avril. Richard remains steadfast.

Giles Hadlow

Giles reappears throughout the novel as an ambitious and increasingly successful conservative politician. He writes a book entitled "Our Laws, Our Borders" and opposes UK membership in the European Union. He is made Minister for the Arts although he has no background in them. As Giles' career progresses, England is riven by anti-immigrant and racist sentiment.

Death and Memoirs

David dies shortly after suffering grave injuries in a racially motivated attack. Richard edits Dave's memoirs, which become the novel itself.

Title

At the end of the novel, David tells Richard that he intends to call his memoirs Our Evenings. David reveals, partly to Richard and partly to the reader, the many meanings the title has for him: the evenings David spent with other men when he was younger, the evenings David spent rehearsing and acting (David says of actors, "our evenings are rarely our own"), and, finally, the happy evenings David and Richard spend together (Richard tells David, "I like evenings best"). The title is borrowed from the first movement of On an Overgrown Path by Leoš Janáček, which David listened to with a young schoolmaster at Bampton, and which inspired David to devote himself to art.

Reception

Overall Critical Response

According to Book Marks, Our Evenings was overall positively reviewed, with 15 reviews being "rave," two being "positive," four being "mixed," and one being a "pan."

Many reviewers of Our Evenings praise Hollinghurst's descriptive powers, his finely-tuned observations of social interactions, and his skillful handling of irony, especially as deployed by David himself. Reviewers also note a continuity of themes in Our Evenings and earlier work: the coming out of a gay man in early or mid-twentieth century England, the relationship between younger and older gay men, and the role of class, money and culture in English society, as experienced by Hollinghurst's gay protagonists. Many also note new political and racial themes in Our Evenings, which are described by Charlie Tyson, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, as a "cry of pain against an England descending into bleak, stiff-jawed chauvinism."

More critical comments note the episodic character of Our Evenings, and some find a lack of depth in its characters, including in David himself.

Examples of Recent Reviews

A typical description of Hollinghurst's style is provided by John Mair writing in the Sunday Times: "t the sentence level, Hollinghurst remains an English stylist without obvious living equal."

Alexandra Harris, writing in The Guardian, asserts that Our Evenings forms a "deep pattern of connection with ... , while being an entirely distinct and brimming whole."

Megan Nolan, writing in the New Statesman, like some other reviewers, locates the "heart" of the novel in the relationship between Dave and his mother, Avril, arguing that it can be "difficult to convey without sentimentality or a universalising blandness, but this is where Hollinghurst excels, remaining patiently and gladly in these moments as they unspool and the life around them becomes as real as our own."

Simon Schama, writing in the Financial Times, like many other reviewers, praises Hollinghurst's ability to evoke a time and place: "I'm not sure any living writer is quite as good as taking you so immersively ..." However, Schama also finds a lack of narrative momentum and continuity, and predicts that many readers will in the end be indifferent to the fate of the novel's characters.

Francesca Peacock, writing in The Spectator, finds nothing to praise in Our Evenings, calling it "tedious." Noting Hollinghurst's continued interest in what she calls "posh" and "non-posh" gay characters, and notwithstanding Our Evening's description of a bi-racial character's experience of anti-immigrant and racist sentiment in post-war and contemporary UK, largely unprecedented in Hollinghurst's earlier novels, she asserts that Our Evenings is a "turgid composite of his previous works."

Notes

References

1. "Our Evenings". Book Marks. Retrieved 26 December 2024.
2. "A Chaos of Chaos and Privilege".
3. Maier, John (4 October 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst review — the best living English novelist?". The Times. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
4. Harris, Alexandra (25 September 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst review – his finest novel yet". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
5. https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2024/10/alan-hollinghurst-our-evenings-review-intimate-vision
6. Schama, Simon (3 October 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst — a gay coming-of-age novel". Financial Times. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
7. https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/familiar-scenarios-our-evenings-by-alan-hollinghurst-reviewed/

• Novels by Alan Hollinghurst
• 2024 British novels
• 2024 LGBTQ-related literary works
• 2020s LGBTQ novels
• Novels with gay themes
• Picador (imprint) books