When his first novel, "The Swimming Pool Library" appeared in 1988, Alan Hollinghurst created a sensation with his explicit sexual candor, almost absent in British literature, as well as writing unapologetically from a gay point of view.
Probably England's finest prose stylist, Hollinghurst, now 70, in his latest book has created an elegy, a reminiscence on gay life from the 1960s to the present, but through the lens of class and race as it impacts on art and sexuality.
It's his most accomplished novel since his best-known "The Line of Beauty," a deconstruction of sex, class, and power in Margaret Thatcher's England, which won the 2004 Booker Prize.
"Our Evenings" is written as a memoir by an actor, Dave Win, born in the 1940s and now in his late sixties, as he reflects back on his life and career. He comes from a lower-middle-class background, brought up alone by his seamstress mother Avril in the market town of Foxleigh.
Win is dark-skinned, half Burmese. Seeking adventure, Avril traveled to Burma after World War II, working as a typist and had an affair with a Burmese man, who was killed in a coup before Dave was born. Returning to Foxleigh as a single mother, despite her neighbors' spiteful whisperings, she succeeds as a stylish dressmaker.
At 13, Dave is awarded a scholarship to Bampton, a top boarding school, through his kind benefactors Mark and Cara Hadlow, who will take an interest in him throughout his life. It is Mark's death at age 94 that inspires Win to pen his autobiography on his colorful life.
School bully
The first half of the book concerns his years at Bampton, especially a momentous week spent at the Hadlow's estate Woolpeck. Their son Giles is a classmate of Dave's. He will later become a Tory politician supporting Brexit and a push to get rid of immigrants.
As a student he was a boorish lout, a spoiled bully, throwing out slurs ("you dirty mongrel") at Dave or locking him in half-nelson wrestling holds, and occasionally taking advantage of him sexually.
Mark and Cara, as lovers of the arts, seem to prefer Dave to Giles. Hollinghurst is setting up a binary here with Dave representing a tolerant, outward-looking Britain and Giles the bigoted, class-conscious return to the glories of England's past.
Dave discovers a gift for theater which he will pursue when he attends Oxford. He struggles with his sexuality and performing on-and-off-stage to the expectations of others, playing the exotic with a desire to please. Moments of condescension and microaggressions, stalk him throughout his life. At Oxford, he describes his existence as a "chaos of privilege and prejudice."
As the rebellious 1960s proceeds, Dave deliberately sabotages his final exams mainly due to the unrequited love of a straight classmate and decides to pursue his passion for acting, becoming involved with an experimental acting troupe, sometimes involving nudity. Although talented, because of his ethnicity, he's not allowed to chase after major mainstream roles, especially Shakespearean ones. Although he becomes known, it's always as a second-tier artist, with audiences recognizing his face but forgetting his name.
Career jealousy
We follow Dave's brief affair with Chris, a civil servant whose landlady charges him rent when he stays overnight, an open relationship with Hector, a fellow Black actor, which lasts a few years, though he's devastated and jealous when Hector leaves to pursue a hit movie career in Hollywood. Later in life he will find a gratifying partnership with the younger Richard.
At first the novel seems as if the philistine-like Giles will be the key relationship in his life, but he appears only intermittently in the second half. The novel's core is Dave's connection with his mother, who meets a wealthy, older woman client Esme Croft, forming a personal and professional bond, as business partner and lover.
They quietly live together in this gossipy town (and later she's rejected by her brother). Avril is formidable, remarkably spending her own life battling against prejudice, yet neither proclaiming or concealing her love for Esme. The book is dedicated to Hollinghurst's mother who recently died at age 97.
Hollinghurst has often been compared to Henry James with a similar psychological stream-of-consciousness style, describing the internal state of mind, contradictory motives, and perceptive/witty analysis of social dynamics as a way of defining his characters:
"I couldn't tell if it was the sort of poshness inseparable from good manners, or the sort that absolves you of any such thing."
Character digressions
Plot isn't as central here, but there can be seemingly long dense digressions with observations on a character's assessment of someone else, revealing that character's traits. The first half of "Our Evenings" can be sluggish with lots of impressions by characters as if they are talking to themselves, resulting in a lagging momentum hampered by an excess of mellowness, as you're not sure when or where the novel is heading. But persevere, as the second half gallops faster, transporting us to a breathtaking finale which will stun the reader.
Despite Dave's talent, he's limited by the few opportunities available to him, yet accepts what time and experience has wrought him. Rather than experiencing exasperation, he feels fulfilled by the little victories that give his life meaning.
Hollinghurst has much to say on the thriving of LGBTQ folk amidst discrimination. But he seems to be issuing a warning that England is in danger of becoming like the self-important Giles. Hollinghurst's answer is love, the love Win feels for his craft, his mother, and Richard.
Dave refuses to be defeated by his losses and unfulfilled dreams, even as he must continually reinvent and assert himself. He summons up the best aspirations of what England is trying to be in the late 20th/early 21st century. Dave's subtle triumph gives "Our Evenings" quiet strength, of a life steeped, not in drama but a steady accumulation of pivotal self-defining moments. "Our Evenings" is not only a tour de force for Hollinghurst, but one of the pinnacle gay novels of 2024.
'Our Evenings: A Novel' by Alan Hollinghurst. Random House, $30.
www.penguinrandomhouse.com
Never miss a story! Keep up to date on the latest news, arts, politics, entertainment, and nightlife.
Sign up for the Bay Area Reporter's free weekday email newsletter. You'll receive our newsletters and special offers from our community partners.
Support California's largest LGBTQ newsroom. Your one-time, monthly, or annual contribution advocates for LGBTQ communities. Amplify a trusted voice providing news, information, and cultural coverage to all members of our community, regardless of their ability to pay -- Donate today!