Our evenings A novel

Review by Booklist Review

British Burmese actor Dave Win self-deprecatingly calls himself "a queer old puzzle." If he is, this novel sets about solving that puzzle by limning Dave's life from preadolescence to his seventies. In his youth, he wins the Hadlow Exhibition, which sends him to the Bampton School and introduces him to its patron, the wealthy philanthropist who will become a kind of father figure to him. At Bampton, and later at Oxford, Dave proves himself to be gifted in acting, the career he will pursue. In adulthood, three men figure significantly in Dave's life: an older man, a fellow actor, and--when Dave is 60--the editor who will become his husband. As it happens, Dave's dressmaker mother is also in a same-sex relationship. Late in life, Dave will begin writing a book, which the reader infers is a memoir to be titled Our Evenings--suggesting that this is the very book he is writing. And he's a brilliant writer. This is an extraordinary novel from Booker Prize--winner Hollinghurst (The Sparsholt Affair, 2018), memorably conceived, beautifully executed, and a gift to lovers of serious literary fiction. Every aspect is flawless: complex, multi-dimensional characters, subtle treatment of emotions, beautiful writing, a vividly realized theatrical setting, and more.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Booker winner Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty) traces the divisions of post-Brexit London in this elegant tale of two men's divergent paths across decades. Dave Win, an aging gay actor, fondly remembers Mark Hadlow, the philanthropist who sponsored his education, after Mark's death at 94. Hadlow funded Dave's boarding school scholarship in the 1960s, where Dave was classmates with Mark's bully son, Giles, now a leading Brexiteer whose own mother calls him an "authoritarian." In what proves to be a brilliant stroke of misdirection, Hollinghurst suggests in the opening pages that the novel will be Giles's. Instead, Dave takes center stage, devoting the bulk of his narration to a life well lived, despite homophobic intimidation at school and the racial prejudice he faced during his career, which often saw him typecast in servant roles (he's half Burmese). He recounts the loving relationship he has with his single mother, Avril, a dressmaker; his success in the theater; and joyful romantic relationships. Neither he nor the reader ever learns the details of Avril's brief liaison with Dave's biological father in Burma after WWII, but its mystery charges the pages with melancholic intensity, as do the prejudices Dave faces throughout his life, which define his fate in the wrenching conclusion, when Giles's vision of the world plays a decisive part. Hollinghurst proves once more to be a master of emotive prose. It's a tour de force. Agent: Christy Fletcher, UTA. (Oct.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The fictional memoir of a gay biracial British actor of rare intelligence and elegance, over a half decade of social change. Hollinghurst's seventh novel features a narrator who, like his creator, is about 70: David Win--the dark-skinned son of a British woman and a man she met while working as a typist in Burma after World War II--was raised by his mother on her own in provincial England. The story opens with a fairly recent event: the death of Mark Hadlow, a mentor whose family offered a scholarship that allowed David to attend an elite prep school from the age of 13 in the early 1960s. Along with the challenges he faced there due to his race and class, he was often targeted by Hadlow's son Giles, a bully who we know has grown up to be a right-wing member of parliament in the era of Brexit, even now "tearing up our future and our hopes." The first half of the book relies on what Win calls his "famous memory" to unfold the story of his adolescence--one brilliant section is set during a seaside holiday when his head whips back and forth between a good-looking Italian waiter, the men on the beach in their bathing suits, and his dressmaker mother and her customer Mrs. Croft, funder of this vacation, now revealed to be much more than a friend. The expansive architecture of this book fluidly slips you from one phase of David's life to the next, examining the ups and downs of his acting career and his love affairs--and then suddenly there's an ending you will likely find yourself reading several times so you can fully take in its subtlety, power, and emotion. Hollinghurst continues to amaze and delight, hitting both the most delicate grace notes and portentous chords perfectly. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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No rehearsal this morning, so we stayed in bed--I made tea, and we sat propped up, searching our phones for stories about Mark. Why we needed to read them I'm not sure: perhaps knowing a famous person makes you part of the story, and you want whoever is telling it to see the point and get it right. The segment last night at the end of the News had been earnest but perfunctory, forty-five seconds from a young correspondent with no first-hand knowledge of the subject. It was confounding to learn about a friend's death in this way. I muted the set, Richard put his arm round me, and we sat saying nothing as the cricket and then the weather came on. Richard only met Mark once, at the ninetieth-birthday dinner at the Tate, where two hundred guests sat down in a room that was hung for the occasion with his own gifts. Mark looked and sounded frail when he made his speech, but we were all on his side, and he was modest and generous, toasting Cara too, who was one day older than him. I wasn't sure, when we spoke briefly with them later, if they were wounded or quietly relieved that Giles wasn't there. In Mark Hadlow's story, from the press point of view, there has always been an irksome absence of scandal--an ethical businessman, a major philanthropist, married to one woman for seventy years; not a hermit, indeed 'a generous host', but with no taste for the limelight: he was said to have turned down both a knighthood and a peerage, and none of the galleries and halls he endowed bears his own name. He can only be got at, for invasive gossip, through his children. Nobody has much on Lydia, except that she once appeared topless in a Warhol movie, and died in a car-crash in France five years ago. But Giles, of course, is everywhere, and so fiercely opposed to all his father stood for that Mark's life-work is eclipsed by his son's destructive career. 'Mark Hadlow: Brexit Minister's millionaire father dies,' said the Times ; while the Mail put Giles first in the sentence: 'Giles Hadlow's father dies at 94'. The photo of the two of them uneasily together dated from the 1980s. It would be mad to say Giles killed Mark, but I wondered what his feelings about him were now--continued defiance, or some kind of guilty grief? 'Will you ring Cara?' Richard said. 'I ought to, yes,' I said, but the question made me wonder: ours was a long and unshakable friendship, but I felt shy of ringing her up. 'Or perhaps I'll write her a letter'--then felt there would be almost too much to say. I looked across at the mirror that reflected the bed, and seemed to frame us in a larger and more beautiful space. 'To have money and do nothing but good with it--how rare is that?' 'Well, pretty much unheard-of,' said Richard. I thought, inexactly, of everything Mark had done for me, even before our first meeting at Woolpeck in my early teens. I pictured myself on that sunny weekend, my anxiety dressed up as self-possession, my cleverness hidden by nerves from the people who were hoping to see it. 'The plain fact is,' I said, 'he changed my life.' I can cry at will, on camera or on stage, night after night; but now I surprised myself. 'I can't imagine where I'd be without him.' 'Oh, love . . .' said Richard, with a consoling rub. 'He was like the father you never had, I sometimes think.' 'We were never that close,' I said, wary of this idea. 'It was really just chance--if I hadn't won the Hadlow Exhibition I would never have gone to that school.' 'And you would never have met Giles.' I thought of what Mum said, just before she died, when the campaign was launched: 'To think we could all be at the mercy of your terrible friend!' 'They won't win, Mum,' I'd said. 'Well, it won't affect me,' she said, 'I'll be gone, but you--and Richard . . .' I looked again in the mirror, at the two old men in bed. Now Mum's gone, and Mark's gone, and here we are, with Giles all over the papers, all over the country, tearing up our future and our hopes. Excerpted from Our Evenings: A Novel by Alan Hollinghurst All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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