“I lay there for agonized hours as the miracle of being in bed at him was nibbled away by the heat and the hangover and the longing.”
This year, I decided to get “a jump” on potential Booker books, and Alan Hollinghurst’s (a previous Booker winner) new novel, Our Evenings (Random House 2024) was a no brainer prediction for me. Even if not listed, I’d recommend it; Hollinghurst’s writing is simply beautiful. While reading, I likened the novel to a candy bar with a bit of everything – chocolate, nougat, caramel, nuts, Krispies… Every page was a delightful surprise.
Beginning when he turns 13, the novel spans the life of David Win, the son of a Burmese man he’s never met and knows next to nothing of and a British dressmaker. David has been awarded a scholarship to a prominent boarding school. There, he struggles with racism, classism, intellectualism, jealousy, and his own sexuality. Also there, he finds his voice, a passion for acting, and a fragile relationship with the wealthy white parents of a classmate who sponsored the scholarship he’d won and serve as his patrons for years to come. What follows is a lifetime of loving, living, and learning – all the while Giles Hadlow and his parents remain in the periphery of his life.
Based on the opening to the novel, I wrongly assumed the book would focus on his relationship with Giles, a bullying teen and David’s first “relationship” who grew up to become the Brexit Minister with some questionable politics. I was pleasantly surprised to learn Giles and the Hadlows, while ever present and playing prominent roles at varying times in his life, don’t define the story of David Win.
I don’t typically like books within books, particularly when you learn the book being written by the main character carries the same name as the book you are reading – so that aspect of the plot did annoy me. Our Evenings, the book within the book, is the story of the men who spent their evenings with David – the first time the title appears is when he’s listening to music with a teacher – but the novel, while encompassing that, also focuses on David’s mother and her partner, his unknown father, and his relationship with himself as a brown gay man.
Hollinghurst’s storytelling is complex and delicious.
Read this book.
*Tune in at the end of the month to see if the novel is longlisted for the 2025 Booker!
A Girl Named Tommi 