Book Club: Our Evenings
Alan Hollinghurst explores life in England across the decades.
Published in 2024, Our Evenings is a novel by Alan Hollinghurst.
The story is a study of a life - exploring a changing England across recent decades.
What's it about?
The central character is Dave Win and the story traces his experiences from adolescence through until his death.
Dave is mixed-race - his mother is a white woman from England and his absent father is an asian man from Burma. Dave lives with his mother in a small village in Berkshire.
Dave is able to attend an exclusive school courtesy of a scholarship provided by the wealthy Hadlow family. Although academically strong, Dave discovers that his passion is acting and he embarks on a life in the theatre.
In his later years, Dave meets Richard at a book festival and they marry.
Dave's experiences are largely told in chronological order, but large chunks of his life seem to be missing - most notably the impact of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s.
Dave doesn't seem to have a lot of agency in anything that's happening around him - stuff happens and he clumsily navigates his way through that.
A fairly crucial plot point is that near the end of the book, Dave is killed in a violent attack. It's then revealed that it is husband Richard who has compiled Dave's memoirs in the form of this book.
What themes does the novel explore?
Race and class are major themes that this novel tackles. There's also an ongoing tension between the creative world and the need for funding and financial support.
Why is this an important novel for gay men?
Hollinghurst is one of the UK's most celebrated queer writers. The reviews for this book have been mixed, with a general consensus that it's probably not his best work.
However, it's still worth reading for the glimpses that it gives us of how the queer experience in the UK has been shaped by the changing social attitudes over the years.
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