Publisher: Picador
Publication Date: October 2024
This has been my first read of a novel by Alan Hollinghurst and I am so pleased I decided to select this for one of my December reads. Having had a bit of a bumpy reading year, I have found that I have been picking up books reading a few pages before being unable to continue and settle on one. When starting ‘Our Evenings’, I was immediately drawn to the narrator David Win, at this point in the story an elderly semi-famous actor who is visiting an even older figure called Cara. Decades earlier, Cara Hadlow and her husband Mark had provided David with a scholarship that enabled him to attend a top boarding school in turn opening a world that would have been unthinkable to him being from a working class, single parent family.
The novel spans through David’s life as a young boy navigating the perils of boarding school and being dual heritage in 1960s Britain. His mother, Avril, is a dressmaker whilst his Burmese father remains absent throughout the entire novel. Despite David’s curiosity he remains reluctant to discuss his father with his mother in fear of upsetting her. During his time at school David becomes aware of his homosexuality whilst also being the subject of bullying in varying degrees. Sometimes it is flippant and dismissive racism, other times it is overt. A significant proportion of this treatment comes from the Hadlow’s own son Giles who also attends the school where David lives. The two boys grow up alongside each other, yet they are shown to be worlds apart both socially and politically.
Giles intersperses David’s narrative and almost acts as a counter to his views and ideologies. In a scene towards the end of the novel they both attend a book event held in an English stately home. Both have become authors, David’s book on acting and Giles, who has made it quite high within the British government, has written a political tome. They are scheduled at the same time and David’s audience is very sparse whilst Giles wins most of the spectators from this very particular crowd. The scene is quite a humorous one and yet I was struck by Giles’s seeming desire to be away from David. Despite David having grown up with Giles and even staying at the family home when he was young the two men have never been friendly which again seems to suggest or question how much society has really changed over time, how archaic opinions of class and identity remain much to our detriment.
The novel skilfully moves over the years of David’s life and works to Illustrate the cultural and political climate of each time. David eventually becomes an older man, and it is interesting how age and youth become a focus for him and how he gradually becomes estranged from the boy who started school all those years ago. Age finally creeps up on him as it does us all. The cast of characters that come into David’s life are so well drawn and nuanced, I could have happily spent more time reading about them. David’s mother Avril, who during the novel forms a relationship with Esme, who they pretend on the surface is her business partner but who are quite clearly in a romantic relationship together. They try to conceal this from David in the early years but are gradually able to be reveal this with the passage of time. We do not see much of this due to events being from David’s perspective. Like other characters who come and go in David’s life, we only see them during interactions with him. The novel culminates in a way to show us why this is the case and provides the insight and poignancy that makes it unforgettable. It is a beautiful book that explores the intricacies and pathways of a single life lived.
Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC
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