Book review: Sublime characterisation and empathy make a novel to savour

Alan Hollinghurst's 'Our Evenings' — a doorstopper at almost 500 pages — is a novel to read slowly and to savour

Alan Hollinghurst is, arguably, the best ever chronicler of the English home counties. File picture: Getty Images

• Our Evenings 
• Alan Hollinghurst.
• Picador, €16.99/ Kindle, €12.03

Dave Win is writing his memoirs — looking back at his life from a happy late middle age. 

It’s not been easy; gay, and half Burmese, (though he’s never met his father), Dave has lived through decriminalisation and has put up with casual racism as well as homophobia.

The memoir starts when Dave, who has gained a scholarship to a public school in Berkshire, is being treated to a weekend at the country house of his benefactors, Mark and Cara Hadlow, a couple with liberal artistic values.

But their son Giles, his contemporary at Bampton, has spent the entire week-end engaged in painfully aggressive play.

As the boys go through school — Dave embracing all the culture, acting, and music on offer while Giles perfects his bullying tactics, they have several memorable encounters. 

Then it’s off to Oxford for both men. Coming out with unease, Dave remarks that his life to date has been a chaos of privilege and prejudice.

Home, in a Berkshire town with the mum he adores, provides sanctuary. 

And it’s on holiday in Devon with his mother and her friend, Esme, that the young teenager first discovers his burgeoning sexuality, watching men passing below his balcony with erotic excitement.

In the passing years, as Dave pursues his solid if not sparkling acting career, his old adversary, at odds with his parents, is making his name as a Eurosceptic member of the Conservative Party. 

By this time Giles has married and has two children, whereas Dave, who has had two significant lovers, has still to find his match.

Author of seven novels including the Booker Prize winning, The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst is, arguably, the best ever chronicler of the English home counties, and he’s at his best here, describing the class system, the political arena, and those nuances of snobbery, homophobia, and racism without ever interrupting the flow of Dave’s recollections.

An acute observer, Dave is an ideal narrator. Attending a drinks party with Giles’s parents, Dave notices, ‘The quick look away when I caught someone staring…the suspicion that I shouldn’t be here, and the subtler suspicion that since I was here I might be someone important.’ 

And, noticing a woman frown furiously as she refused a canape from a black waitress, he thinks, ‘It was a useful education, for the actor, in the language of disdain’.

The scenes at the theatre are especially enlightening, as Dave learns what it takes to become proficient. His being different adds another dimension. 

He doesn’t play a Burmese man until his 60s, and is always being mistaken for ‘some other brown person.’ 

When, from time to time, Giles and Dave encounter each other; at an exhibition, a reunion, or a literary festival, Giles always somehow belittles Dave. 

At a concert where Dave is narrating, Giles chooses to take his helicopter and leave for Brussels just as the music is nearing its climax. Has he manufactured these opportunities?

The text becomes episodic as the men age — skimming over those years when Giles helps to get the Brexit vote over the line, and finally, when the pandemic takes hold. 

But It’s the early years and the development of the men’s characters that hold sway. 

Asked if he suspected how Giles would turn out, Dave says: “I think perhaps he always had a taste for power, yes, and punishing his fellow man.”

A doorstopper at almost 500 pages, this is a novel to read slowly and to savour. 

Hollinghurst’s writing and characterisation are simply sublime — but it’s his insights and empathy that make this novel so special. 

I was sad when the end came, and not just because after some pleasant surprises came one almighty shock.

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