Warm, subtle, engaging, Our Evenings tells the story of the life of Dave Win, in sustained episodes from his youth to his death. Win is a wonderful character, a kind, intelligent actor who presents an interesting lens on British life over the past 70 years, as he is both gay and half-Burmese. You'll probably be accustomed to the style of Hollinghurst, witty and precise with a practiced ear for dialogue and a keen understanding of desire. Our Evenings is nearly 500 pages long, but every page is a pleasure: Win is magnificent company and his mother, April, his friends and lovers are beautifully drawn. Our Evenings could also be read as a sort of anti-Brexit novel, as Win's contemporary, Giles Hadlow, becomes a Eurosceptic campaigning MP, the antithesis of everything that Dave Win is. Our Evenings is a novel about kindness, about approaching the world with both sensitivity and courage. I loved it.

Our Evenings is presented as the memoir of acclaimed actor Dave Win. When his benefactor the well-known philanthropist Mark Hadlow dies, Dave has occasion to contact his widow and look back on his own life. Alan Hollinghurst has again created characters I’m interested in, that I believe in, and a complete world within the book that I am happy to inhabit. Here we have a politician and a young man attached to a family more affluent and more worldly than his own, but there I think the comparisons to The Line of Beauty should end. There are flashbacks to Dave’s youth, ‘a chaos of privilege and prejudice’; Hollinghurst captures beautifully the details of the 1960s with a light touch, the mention of a particular car here, a new and exciting tape recorder there. It’s the almost ubiquitous racism that really stings the modern reader’s eyes though: people either don’t know what to say to Dave or feel all too confident in saying unpalatable things, making Esme’s blunt warmth even more refreshing. I recognised in myself Dave wanting to tell his mother about his stay with the Hadlows but ‘even more to keep these things to myself’; Hollinghurst puts into words a thought or a feeling I have had that has not quite crystallised. Observations can be mundane yet delicious, commonplace and universal. Hollinghurst does not avoid explicit content but uses allusion for impact when Dave has his first proper sexual encounter, rendered simply as ‘we … moved on to the astonishing next stage’. The pacing is great throughout and the end, in the near-present, hit me with a whump of shock. Alan Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize in 2004 and is shortly to be given The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence so he hardly needs my endorsement, but I’m happy to say I loved Our Evenings. My deflation at finishing it is tempered by the delicious doorstopper of The Stranger’s Child waiting to be read and seeing the man himself at Cheltenham Literary Festival. Thanks to Picador for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley.

Alan Hollinghurst has an exceptional talent and Our Evenings is a showcase for the power of his writing. It’s the story of Dave Win’s life, acutely observed from childhood over the next fifty years as we follow him from boarding school to his theatre career and late life reflections. Simply, it’s a tour de force which examines, often with subtlety, racism, sexuality, class divide and bigotry. The main players are Dave and his mother, a seamstress in a small market town. There’s a claustrophobic and suspicious feel as Dave is mixed race so never quite fits in. He’s sponsored by a wealthy couple whose son, Giles, features throughout Dave’s life; Giles is a right wing politician and an unlikely friend. Dave is subject to bullying and other discriminations because of his colour. As a teenager he begins to understand and explore his sexuality which leads to further difficulties. This is a story which so accurately reflects parts of modern Britain. It’s about living in a society where superficially, prejudice is denied but in reality, that undercurrent is ever present and a minority are subjected to small cruelties almost daily. I’ve enjoyed every page. Beautifully written, reflective and thought provoking. Another outstanding novel from one of the greatest writes of our generation.

"Our Evenings" by Alan Hollinghurst is bound to be up for some awards. Following David Win from his time at private school, through Oxford university, we drop in at various points throughout his acting career and his love life. I loved his mother Avril and her partner Esme. I also loved Mark and Cara Hadlow who provided stability for David when funds were short or he needed to talk to someone who cared about the arts. It does feel like a long book but it is so worth the read.

This is the life story of David Win. Half Burmese, half British, he grows up in a small, country market town in the care of his mother, a local seamstress. His progress through public school and Oxford and on into a career as an actor is charted against the thousand small indignities meted out to him because of the colour of his skin and because of his sexuality. This is a masterclass in novel writing. Hollinghurst takes what seems like the traditional novel form and subverts it into something far darker, more anxiety inducing and angry. Bigotry and the rise of the far right are never far from the surface and as the timeline speeds towards Brexit and Covid, things tip over into the disasters that were foretold in the school rooms and playing fields of David's youth.