Our Evenings

By: Alan Hollinghurst

Narrated by: Prasanna Puwanarajah

Alan Hollinghurst, the Booker Prize-winning author of The Line of Beauty, brings us a dark, luminous and wickedly funny portrait of modern England through the lens of one man’s acutely observed and often unnerving experience. It is a story of race and class, theatre and sexuality, love and the cruel shock of violence, from one of the finest writers of our age.

Dave Win is thirteen years old when he first goes to stay with the sponsors of his scholarship at a local boarding school. This weekend, with its games and challenges and surprising encounters, will open up heady new possibilities, even as it exposes him to their son Giles’ envy and violence.

As their lives unfold over the next half a century, the two boys’ careers will diverge dramatically: Dave, a gifted actor struggling with convention and discrimination, Giles an increasingly powerful and dangerous politician.

Our Evenings is Dave Win’s own account of his life as a schoolboy and student, his first love affairs, in London, and on the road with an experimental theatre company, and of a late-life affair, which transforms his sixties with a new sense of happiness and a perilous security.

The narrator makes the story come to life

Another good story from the author. At times I wanted more depth and information around the issues addressed but I think it reflects David’s reserved nature

Still recovering from the ending

My favourite so far this year. Alan Hollinghurst is so good and the read by Prasanna Puwanarajah was faultless. Effortless shifting between eras. The party scene where they're dancing to Tales of Brave Ulysses by Cream is one of the best 'music scenes' I've read - they're usually eggy and clunky.