Alan Hollinghurst: OUR EVENINGS

I approach a Hollinghurst novel, especially one as bulky as this, with some apprehension, since he often seems to be channelling Henry James, with drawn-out descriptions and a snail’s pace. Pleased to report that these are not issues with Our Evenings, an autobiographical study of a mixed-race British actor, David Win, the product of an expatriate Englishwoman’s brief affair with a Burmese officer. His mother settles into a lesbian marriage, which gives David as much security to grow up in as any other boy, although his skin colour always sets him apart right up to the book’s ending in the era of Covid lockdowns.

The story begins with his schooldays on a private scholarship to a boarding school on the South Downs. Giles Hadlow, his benefactor’s son, is a fellow boarder and casts a shadow over David’s life that lasts beyond school. David’s natural gift for comedy makes him popular, and he enjoys the sexual favours of several other boys. As we know, many boys grow out of schoolboy homosexuality. David is one of those who doesn’t, and as his acting skills take him without too many setbacks into a long and multi-faceted career in theatre and television, there are flings and love affairs, although not until middle age does he find a love that endures. Giles Hadlow, a Minister in the Cameron administration, reappears, as do some other Old Boys from their schooldays.

Hollinghurst is, I think, unchallenged as the doyen of British gay authors, and Our Evenings (odd title) plays out against the societal changes in gay life pre- and post-Liberation, through HIV/Aids to where we are now, with same-sex marriage and parenting. This is a big book with a big cast of mostly likeable characters, all splendidly rounded, and an engaging storyline, which gets richer with each passing decade. A few critics have hailed this as Alan’s best novel, but for me only A Line of Beauty came close to the outstanding level of his debut, The Swimming-Pool Library and that may owe something to the superb TV adaptation. Our Evenings is good, very good, but not quite in the pantheon of supreme gay fiction.