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Our Evenings: A Novel Audiobook
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From the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, a piercing novel of modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed experiences
“Our Evenings is a truly astonishing novel, by turns delicate and ferocious, radical in the way it explores questions of race, class, sexuality, and origins.”—Tash Aw, author of Five Star Billionaire
Did I have a grievance? Most of us, without looking far, could find something that had harmed us, and oppressed us, and unfairly held us back. I tried not to dwell on it, thought it healthier not to, though I’d lived my short life so far in a chaos of privilege and prejudice.
Dave Win, the son of a a Burmese man he’s never met and a British dressmaker, is thirteen years old when he gets a scholarship to a top boarding school. With the doors of elite English society cracked open for him, heady new possibilities emerge, even as Dave is exposed to the envy and viciousness of his wealthy classmates.
Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel follows Dave from the 1960s on—through the possibilities that remained open for him, and others that proved to be illusory: as a working-class brown child in a decidedly white institution; a young man discovering queer culture and experiencing his first, formative love affairs; a talented but often overlooked actor, on the road with an experimental theater company; and an older Londoner whose late-in-life marriage fills his days with an unexpected sense of happiness and security.
From “one of our most gifted writers” (The Boston Globe), Our Evenings sweeps readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.
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"A sweeping story of one man’s life—first a working-class, brown-skinned teenager at a fancy boarding school on a scholarship, then a young man exploring his sexuality, then an actor, then a married man in London—and the family, not his own who gave him so much and also would threaten to take it away. All of this being very likely, given the source, to destroy you by the end (in the best way, of course)."
— Lit Hub
Quotes
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Hollinghurst knows that the present is never as enlightened as it likes to think it is, nor the past quite as backward. . . . [His genius] has been to speak in a voice steeped in English heritage about a subculture that England’s rigid and stratified society long refused to acknowledge, let alone accept.
— Giles Harvey, The New York Times -
[Hollinghurst has] a truly Jamesian fineness of perception. . . . [He is] one of the best novelists at work today.
— The Wall Street Journal -
One can’t get enough of Hollinghurst’s sentences.
— The Washington Post -
One of our most gifted writers.
— The Boston Globe -
Our Evenings is a truly astonishing novel, by turns delicate and ferocious, radical in the way it explores questions of race, class, sexuality, and origins in a genteel English Home Counties setting. It is the story of a country undergoing great change, even if its people aren’t aware of it—the novel moves through time so beautifully that I felt such a sense of loss at the end.
— Tash Aw -
Booker winner Hollinghurst (The Line of Beauty) traces the divisions of post-Brexit London in this elegant tale of two men’s divergent paths across decades. . . . Hollinghurst proves once more to be a master of emotive prose. It’s a tour de force.
— Publishers Weekly, starred review -
Our Evenings is a truly astonishing novel, by turns delicate and ferocious, radical in the way it explores questions of race, class, sexuality, and origins in a genteel English Home Counties setting. It is the story of a country undergoing great change, even if its people aren’t aware of it—the novel moves through time so beautifully that I felt such a sense of loss at the end.
— Tash Aw -
Our Evenings is a truly astonishing novel, by turns delicate and ferocious, radical in the way it explores questions of race, class, sexuality, and origins in a genteel English Home Counties setting. It is the story of a country undergoing great change, even if its people aren’t aware of it—the novel moves through time so beautifully that I felt such a sense of loss at the end.
— Tash Aw -
Our Evenings is a truly astonishing novel, by turns delicate and ferocious, radical in the way it explores questions of race, class, sexuality, and origins in a genteel English Home Counties setting. It is the story of a country undergoing great change, even if its people aren’t aware of it—the novel moves through time so beautifully that I felt such a sense of loss at the end.
— Tash AwPraise for Alan Hollinghurst -
Hollinghurst has a strong, perhaps unassailable claim to be the best English novelist working today.
— The Guardian -
Hollinghurst continues to amaze and delight, hitting both the most delicate grace notes and portentous chords perfectly . . . and then suddenly there’s an ending you will likely find yourself reading several times so you can fully take in its subtlety, power, and emotion.
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review -
Our Evenings is marked by a sharp eye, a tender sensibility, and an unflagging wit. I never wanted it to end.
— Emma Donoghue, author of The Pull of the Stars and Room -
This sublime novel—classic Hollinghurst in everything but point of view—could not be timelier.
— Paul Mendez, author of Rainbow Milk -
This is an extraordinary novel from Booker Prize winner Hollinghurst, memorably conceived, beautifully executed, and a gift to lovers of serious literary fiction. Every aspect is flawless: complex, multidimensional characters, subtle treatment of emotions, beautiful writing, a vividly realized theatrical setting, and more.
— Booklist, starred review -
Hollinghurst doesn’t hesitate to linger over scenes of exquisite sensory detail and complex social ritual—the lift of a brow, the inflection of a voice. This lends the book a richness and subtlety that sets it apart from most contemporary fiction.
— Vulture -
Hollinghurst shows off his singular ability to bring readers inside the world of a character.
— Town & Country -
Award-winning writer Alan Hollinghurst returns with a deeply moving novel, Our Evenings. . . . Readers will be swept away by this beautiful narrative as our protagonist navigates modern England and the intersectionality of class, race, and sexuality.
— SheReads -
Booker winner Hollinghurst traces the divisions of post-Brexit London in this elegant tale of two men’s divergent paths across decades. . . . Hollinghurst proves once more to be a master of emotive prose. It’s a tour de force.
— Publishers Weekly, starred review
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About Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is the author of several novels, including The Line of Beauty, which won the Man Booker Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received the Somerset Maugham Award, the E. M. Forster Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction.