There is something deliciously uncinematic about Our Evenings, the seventh novel by Alan Hollinghurst. I find more and more that what turns me off a work of contemporary fiction is a sense that it is, if not written with half an eye on eventual adaptation, then at least informed by an admiration for the rapid-fire gratification and exposition better suited to the screen than the page. Here, Hollinghurst has a more than substantial plot – one that could be ripe for a BBC handover – yet so much of what makes this book magnificent would be impossible to convey through any other form. The events keep coming, but the quiet moments that receive such loving attention are the real treasure.
More crucially, Hollinghurst’s main character, Dave Win, is one of those you panic over in the final pages knowing you don’t have much time left together. Our Evenings begins with an adolescent Dave who must ingratiate himself with the Hadlows, the wealthy family who sponsor his tuition at a prestigious boarding school. The Hadlow son, Giles, is the capricious bully of Dave’s year. At 13, Dave is already quite fluent and accomplished at flattering and code-switching to appease the various demands and curiosities of his wealthy patrons, a knack we watch him employ in a different, sexualised manner in later life as an actor and member of an experimental theatre company. This territory is comfortable, vintage Hollinghurst, and one settles in with an idea of what will be enjoyed over the next 500 pages. But the real heart of the book lies not in class vagaries but in Dave’s mother, Avril.
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