Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst

I make no bones about it, one of my favourite fictional realities to enter is that of the gay male, and in particular, the (to me) exotic world of the Oxbridge educated, gay Englishman. My coming of age reading was books like The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Brideshead Revisited, Maurice (I can still picture my friend’s weathered copy which was kept on the roof of her building in Montreal where we went to college- we read it while sunbathing). I love the novels of Alan Hollinghurst deeply. One of Britain’s greatest novelists, his books follow queer British men in the 20th century. I think about the ending of Line of Beauty at least once a week since reading it( I highly recommend it on audiobook, read by Alex Jennings) . Alan Hollinghurst’s latest novel, Our Evenings, is perhaps not his sharpest formally( though in comparison to the average writer- it is, I am just judging his books by the standards of his others, because Hollinghurst is kind of in a league of his own) at one point the book even apologises for itself- it feels the most vulnerable. It is a novel, in memoir form, about failure and rejection. Dave, the protagonist, never quite makes it as an actor, and he is unsure if it is down to his mixed race identity, his talent or luck. There is considerably less sex in Our Evenings than other Hollinghurst novels, but that is because not that many people want to have sex with Dave. There is an excruciating narrative of Dave crushing on a straight college friend, going as far as to creepily crawl into bed with him, who can’t muster the energy to outright and flatly reject him(again one thinks, is it because Dave is a man, or is it because he is not the right type of man and that the friend does have queer curiosity that teases Dave) He invites the friend on a boat ride in a punt, as seen on Oxbridge postcards, and the friend wisely, though awkwardly brings along another male friend. The scene is rendered so embarrassing and humiliating I kept stopping mid sentence and looking out the window. Hollinghurst is so good at this type of thing you feel the embarrassment yourself. They sail past a men’s nude beach on the riverbank

It’s as if Dave is sailing past another more sex filled, joyfully depraved earlier novel of Hollinghurst’s, and is unable to enter. It is deeply sad. The antagonist of the novel, Giles Hadlow, Dave’s school friend, and a Brexit voting politician, isn’t given as much page time, though he soars to success when Dave doesn’t- they both appear at the same book festival and Dave’s event is half empty because it is scheduled at the same time as Giles. It is hinted at, though not throughly explained, that perhaps Giles experimented with Dave and other boys at school and the nastiness with which he did it has extended into his political life. The mystery of Dave’s Burmese father isn’t fully clear either but as a child of a single mother like Dave, you walk through the world without your life ever being fully explained, half of you is hidden and inaccessible and its an entirely different experience of the world than someone with two parents. It does genuinely feel like you face rejection more than the average person or that you’re marked for failure in some way.

There is a lesbian relationship central to the novel which is depicted with more solicitude than other novels I have seen by men where a kind of shadowiness seems to cover any mention of body parts or lesbian intimacy on the page. It also does micro-aggression very well, endless small acts building up to a terrible act of violence. I feel the same tenderness towards this novel as I do Michel Houellebecq’s most recent, Annihilation, which I reviewed in the Telegraph, because both depict older people falling in love and having sex, experiencing humiliation and failure, where in this societal moment, there is such an emphasis on youth, which is reflective in publishing as well, and I don’t like the expectation that everyone should read and enjoy books about only young beautiful people having sex.

Alan Hollinghurst is a known fan of Henry James, which is sending me down a wormhole ( I will read anything writers I love read). I never quite got into Henry James when I was younger, it just wasn’t the right moment, but now definitely is -because I am essentially in the same business as James: I am a North American who has made Britain their home and writes about the British. I criticise it, but I love it immensely, more than anywhere else in the world. I realise, the images conjured in my head when reading James are very similar to Edward Gorey illustrations, wispy, slightly camp and quite dancerley- I wonder if anyone had turned Henry James novels into ballets because they would suit perfectly.