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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 English mother, Avril, is a skilled dressmaker with her own business; David and Avril live together and are 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 become friends, and perhaps more. Esme, Avril and David go on holiday to Devon, where Dave becomes increasingly aware of his own same-sex attraction. 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. David visits the Hadlows at Woolpeck, a farm owned by Cara's family. David's personal connection with Mark and Cara grows, and he is fascinated by the house, Cara's farming relatives, and the 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, an elderly French actress.

Oxford

After Bampton, David attends the University of Oxford. He initially does well academically, but he becomes increasingly consumed by his role as Mosca in a University production of Volpone. His performance is well-reviewed, but 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, with whom he falls in love during an intense rehearsal. Both Dave and Hector, who is black, experience English racism, although Hector's experience of it is starker and more painful.

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 enjoys an emotional stability he didn't find in his earlier relationships.

David experiences the death of Esme, Mark, and, eventually, 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 is described by David as a Philistine. As Giles's 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 spends rehearsing and acting; and, finally, the evenings David and Richard spend together at home (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. The experience inspired David to devote himself to art.

Reception

Overall Positive Critical Response

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

Style

Most reviewers of Our Evenings praise Hollinghurst's prose style, including his vivid descriptions of places and physical objects, his finely-tuned portrayals of social interactions, and his skillful use of irony, especially as deployed in the dialogue of David Win himself.

A typical description of Hollinghurst's use of language is provided by John Mair writing in the Sunday Times: "t the sentence level, Hollinghurst remains an English stylist without obvious living equal." Similarly, Simon Schama, writing in the Financial Times, says, "I'm not sure any living writer is quite as good as taking you so immersively ..."

Examining Hollinghurst's portrayal of the relationship between David Win and his mother, Avril, Megan Nolan, writing in the New Statesman, finds the "heart" of the novel, asserting 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."

Continuity of Themes

Reviewers note the continuity of themes in Our Evenings and earlier work by Hollinghurst. These include the experience of coming out in early and mid-twentieth century England; relationships, sexual and otherwise, between gay men of divergent backgrounds and ages; the transmission and transformation of gay modes of life; and class, money and culture in English society generally.

In this vein, 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."

Francesca Peacock, on the other hand, writing for The Spectator, asserts that Hollinghurst's continued interest in what she calls "homosexual relationships" between "posh" and "non-posh" men results in a novel that is a "turgid composite of his previous works."

Race and Politics

Reviewers uniformly note the importance of race in Our Evenings, more present in this novel than in Hollinghurst's previous works, or in any case handled in a radically different way. Hollinghurst has replaced earlier scenes of sex between men of different races, told from the perspective of white protagonists, with a portrayal of a whole life from perspective of a bi-racial man. Most reviewers find that Hollinghurst is successful in doing so, in particular in describing how Dave experiences, suffers from, and, with increasing skill, manages outsider status and outright racial animus.

On the national, rather than personal, level, some reviewers object to what they perceive as a two-dimensional portrayal Britain's transformed politics, symbolized by Giles as school bully, jeering bigot, and sexual hypocrite turned Brexiteer villain. Other reviewers are more sympathetic, seeing such stark contrasts as an understandable literary response to England's transformed and, to many, disturbing political scene. Thus Charlie Tyson, writing for the Los Angeles Review of Books, identifies in the novel a "cry of pain against an England descending into bleak, stiff-jawed chauvinism."

Character Development

A few reviewers find that some or all of the characters in Our Evenings lack depth. Sam Worley, writing in Vulture, suggests "young Dave doesn’t quite come alive," although he finds greater interest in the older Dave, when he "develops crushes, bombs a crucial college exam, and, accepting that his life’s path will be different than that of his boarding-school mates, joins an experimental theater troupe." Simon Schama also suggests to his readers that "when you close the book, you’re not going to miss that much."

Other reviewers are entirely positive: Hamilton Cain, writing in the New York Times, finds "Dave a captivating protagonist, threading narrative lines as Hollinghurst skewers the hidden and not-so-hidden bigotries that define Britain." Similarly, Michael Cart, writing for Booklist, finds Our Evening's characters to be "complex" and "multi-dimensional."

Structure of Novel

Some reviewers note the episodic nature of the novel. Critical response to this varies. Simon Schama is disappointed by the lack of underlying structure and momentum. The author of a review in Kirkus Reviews, on the other hand, finds that the "expansive architecture of this book fluidly slips you from one phase of David's life to the next."

Notes

References

1. "Our Evenings". Book Marks. Retrieved 26 December 2024.
2. Maier, John (4 October 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst review — the best living English novelist?". The Times. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
3. ^ Shama, Simon (3 October 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst — a gay coming-of-age novel". Financial Times. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
4. Nolan, Megan (25 September 2024). "Allan Hollinghurst's intimate vision". New Statesman. Retrieved 26 December 2024.
5. ^ Harris, Alexandra (25 September 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst review – his finest novel yet". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
6. ^ Miller, Laura (9 October 2024). "The Author in Evening". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
7. ^ Harvey, Giles (23 September 2024). "Color, Class and Carnality Collide in Alan Hollinghurst's New Novel". The New Yorker. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
8. ^ McGrath, Charles (8 October 2024). "Alan Hollinghurst's Lost England". The Atlantic Magazine. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
9. ^ Peacock, Francesca (12 October 2024). "Familiar Scenarios". The Spectator. Retrieved 26 December 2024.
10. ^ Worley, Sam (7 October 2024). "Alan Hollinghurst Tries to Atone". The Vulture. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
11. ^ Tyson, Charlie (10 October 2024). "A Chaos of Privilege and Privilege". LA Review of Books. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
12. Cain, Hamilton (8 October 2024). "An Exquisite Queer Odyssey by a Literary Master". New York Times. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
13. Cart, Michael (15 September 2024). "Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst". Booklist. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
14. "Our Evenings". Kirkus Reviews. 17 August 2024. Retrieved 27 December 2024.

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