Our Evenings
A Novel
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4.3 • 56 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, “an engrossing tale of one man’s personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language” (The New York Times Book Review)
“The finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time.”—The Guardian
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Town & Country, Slate, Good Housekeeping, Financial Times, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, Parade, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews
Did I have a grievance? 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.
Dave Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
From “one of our most gifted writers” (The Boston Globe), Our Evenings sweeps readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Brilliantly smart and artistic Dave Win, an aging, gay, biracial actor, looks back on his life and reflects on the loss of Mark Hadlow, a philanthropist who sponsored his education. Hadlow’s brutish son, Giles—now a prominent Brexiteer—pops up at various points in Win’s life. But although he’s a constant presence, Win’s story is not about him (as much as Giles would like it to be). Instead, Win fondly remembers his relationship with his single mother and the romantic relationships which have shaped his beautiful, complicated life. Booker Prize–winning author Alan Hollinghurst’s sumptuous and tender writing is both an intense character study where you crave to learn every tiny detail about Win’s life and a post-Brexit social commentary about race, class, sexuality, privilege, and prejudice. A masterful tale bursting with compassion, humor, wit, and anger, it’s also a poignant and elegant stroll through one man’s experiences.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
