Dec 30

Dec 30 Our Evenings

About the book

Author: Alan Hollinghurst
Publisher: Random House

More info:
The StoryGraph | Goodreads
Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the review.

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Bookshop.org (print) | Libro.fm (audio)

My Review

Our Evenings has a lot of things going for it, in terms of being a winner for me: It follows a character across their entire life, it depicts that life with tenderness and care, it has a strong first-person voice. And while it didn’t land with me 100%, I netted out on liking it.

Our Evenings follows a gay, half-Burmese actor in England from his childhood as a schoolboy with a scholarship sponsored by a wealthy family through old age. It’s the story of a beautiful life with excellent character work. There is much to love here about queerness, and otherness, and Xenophobia particularly in England, and living a joyful life filled with love anyway.

That said, I personally felt like this book was too long. And I don’t usually say that! I love long books, and I love the story of a full life. But I was ready for the book to end. I also really didn’t like the ending very much — I won’t say more because I’m not one for spoilers, but it made me go, “ugh…really???”

If you’re an especially big fan of queer historical literary fiction, I think this could have enough of what you love to outweigh the parts I didn’t. You may have to see for yourself!