Our Evenings
The Instant Sunday Times Bestseller from a Booker Prize-winning Author
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Narrated by:
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Prasanna Puwanarajah
Summary
A ‘Book of the Year’ for The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, Daily Express, The Spectator, The Financial Times, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and the I
'I must confess my devotion immediately: I read every word this man writes. I wait for every new novel and the wait has been worth it: this is gorgeous. I simply love the way this man writes' – Russell T. Davies, writer and creator of It's A Sin
'The best novel that’s been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It’s funny but desperately moving too' – The Sunday Times
Featured on Radio 4's 'Book at Bedtime'
Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.
Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles’ envy and violence.
As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys’ careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling with convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.
Our Evenings is the intimate and touching story of Dave Win’s life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company, and of a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.
Our Evenings entered the Sunday Times Fiction Hardback chart at #9 w/b 07-10-24.
Critic reviews
David Win, a biracial, fatherless, working class scholarship boy, is thoroughly rooted in his white and privately educated world, and thoughtfully narrates the story of his long life through reflective vignette.
It sounds slight, but this is such a thoughtful, graceful, kind hearted wander through time. Important social and political events are shown rather than told, and this techniqueof showing how events effect the individual is quietly effective because of this personal approach.
Without caricature, his wonderfully heroic and stoic mum Avril, and abusive villain Giles add drama, but ultimately this is a thoughtful book that reflects on big themes from the perspective of old age.
A wonderful performance of a great book
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Alan Hollinghurst is a Booker Prize-winning author who's lauded and lionised. A new novel from him is something of an event. I read the description, ummed and aahed, then finally bit the bullet. It's a long read - 16 and a half hours - and for that, I want to feel engaged. Was I? No.
Hollinghurst's writing style borders on perfect: word choice, story flow, descriptions all rise up off the page to paint their pictures. That was probably what kept me going. The narrative content didn't.
Really, I should've read the blurb more carefully. I'm not a fan of slow, decades-spanning tales, so I guess I started on the wrong foot. The novel follows the life of Dave Win, who's half-Burmese, as he navigates school, college, discovering himself, and carving out a career in the theatre. Maybe it's because I haven't followed anything like the same path, but I didn't really relate. The amount of time spent while Win was at school in the 1960s and early 70s bored me rigid. Part of the problem was a lack of variety in tone. Every incident and thought and reflection hovered around the same pitch. There were no real highs or lows; no joy or hot, vivid anger.
In the end, I 'flicked' through the last 3 hours or so, desperate to finish but also not to waste that amount of time on reading something unrewarding. Oh well, not one for the reread pile.
Not for me
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A gorgeous story.
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Brilliant and moving
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Outstanding narration of a superb novel
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