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Alan Hollinghurst’s elegiac seventh novel is cast in the glow of late afternoon sunlight. Unspooling over several decades, Our Evenings is the story of Dave, a mixed-race, gay actor looking back on his life following the death of his benefactor. This benefactor was the father of an influential right-wing politician called Giles, who bullied Dave at school and hovers over the narrative like a malign bird, occasionally pecking away at the corners of Dave’s consciousness. His political career flourishes as Dave, so used to concealing himself, discovers himself in London’s 1960s experimental theatre scene. Hollinghurst writes exquisitely, quietly attuned to the fluctuations of bigotry and prejudice in English society. It’s an impeccably observed story of a life, even if Hollinghurst can’t help firing the odd shot at the rise of Brexit. “Maybe it was a limitation in me to see him only, or in essence, as an adolescent sadist,” thinks Dave of Giles. “A spoilt hand-biting brat, who could never, surely, be taken seriously by anyone.”
