Class, sexuality and politics are the themes that Alan Hollinghurst often returns to in his masterful novels, which have included The Swimming Pool Library (1988) and the 2004 Booker-winner The Line of Beauty. And Our Evenings, in which the late middle-aged narrator Dave Win shares the trajectory of his life, revisits these themes. Dave's story unspools, from childhood to growing into adulthood as a gay man of a generation that reached maturity not that long after the decriminalisation of homosexuality. Over the years, Dave welcomes his freedoms, faces intolerance, finds love and loses it, encounters an old adversary, all against a backdrop of constant social and cultural change. "The events keep coming, but the quiet moments that receive such loving attention are the real treasure," says The New Statesman. "The depiction of Dave's mother Avril, their closeness is palpable and deeply moving." The Guardian says: "Hollinghurst is precise about sentiment in ways that puts loose sentimentality to shame." He is "above all an appreciator," it adds. "That capacity for appreciation acquires new emotional and political meaning here, in the finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time."(LB)

First published October 3, 2024