{"product_id":"our-evenings-isbn-9780593243084","title":"Our Evenings","description":"\u003cb\u003eFrom the internationally acclaimed winner of the Booker Prize, “an engrossing tale of one man’s personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language” (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, \u003c\/i\u003eEditors’ Choice)\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“The finest novel yet from one of the great writers of our time.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSHORTLISTED FOR A LAMMY AWARD • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Town \u0026amp; Country, Slate, Good Housekeeping, Financial Times, The Economist, \u003c\/i\u003eChicago Public Library, \u003ci\u003eParade, Publishers Weekly, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eDid 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.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDave Win, the son of 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAlan 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom “one of our most gifted writers” (\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe\u003c\/i\u003e), \u003ci\u003eOur Evenings \u003c\/i\u003esweeps readers from our past to our present through the beauty, pain, and joy of one deeply observed life.“\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is that rare bird: a muscular work of ideas and an engrossing tale of one man’s personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A novel about acceptance: of time’s passage, of life’s limitations, of the small victories that make existence meaningful.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“It’s time for American readers to know the genius of Alan Hollinghurst . . . Britain’s finest prose stylist. . . . Extraordinary . . . gorgeous.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Every new Alan Hollinghurst novel is cause for celebration. . . . [Written by] the author of the loveliest sentences in contemporary English. . . \u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is melancholy and ravishing.”\u003cb\u003e—Slate, “The 10 Best Books of 2024”\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hollinghurst’s cultural range—as his new novel, \u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e, again confirms—is enormous.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Atlantic\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is [Hollinghurst’s] longest and most stately production yet, the measured, deliberate work of an experienced artist who refuses to be rushed. Vaulty and voluminous . . .”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Los Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Perhaps his best yet. . . If you’ve never read [Hollinghurst] and enjoy literary fiction, compelling characters and a panorama of British history, \u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is for you.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Parade\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is] the best novel that’s been written about contemporary Britain in the past ten years. It’s funny but desperately moving too.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The Sunday Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is] a meditation on growing old, the mutability of relationships, and the fragility of social progress, framed by the world-on-fire mood of the present.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Vulture\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The book contains moments of extraordinary beauty and set pieces as powerful as anything Hollinghurst has written.”\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e—The New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Hollinghurst is] infinitely sensitive to landscapes, colours, textures, able to convey the most delicate of sensations and emotions.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe Telegraph\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Exquisitely fashioned . . . a masterful accomplishment.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBookPage,\u003c\/i\u003e starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e 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.”\u003cb\u003e—Tash Aw\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings \u003c\/i\u003eis marked by a sharp eye, a tender sensibility, and an unflagging wit. I never wanted it to end.”\u003cb\u003e—Emma Donoghue, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Pull of the Stars \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eRoom\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This sublime novel—classic Hollinghurst in everything but point of view—could not be timelier.”\u003cb\u003e—Mendez, author of \u003ci\u003eRainbow Milk\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Extraordinary. . . Every aspect is flawless: complex, multidimensional characters, subtle treatment of emotions, beautiful writing, a vividly realized theatrical setting, and more.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hollinghurst shows off his singular ability to bring readers inside the world of a character.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eTown \u0026amp; Country\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hollinghurst proves once more to be a master of emotive prose. [\u003ci\u003eOur Evenings\u003c\/i\u003e is] a tour de force.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Hollinghurst continues to amaze and delight.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e, starred review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eAlan Hollinghurst\u003c\/b\u003e is the author of the novels \u003ci\u003eThe Swimming-Pool Library; The Folding Star; The Spell; The Line of Beauty,\u003c\/i\u003e winner of the Man Booker Prize and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and \u003ci\u003eThe Stranger’s Child\u003c\/i\u003e. He has also 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. He lives in London.\u003cb\u003eNo rehearsal this morning,\u003c\/b\u003e so we stayed in bed—I made tea, and we sat propped up, searching our phones for stories about Mark. Why we needed to read them I’m not sure: perhaps knowing a famous person makes you part of the story, and you want whoever is telling it to see the point and get it right. The segment last night at the end of the News had been earnest but perfunctory, forty-five seconds from a young correspondent with no first-hand knowledge of the subject. It was confounding to learn about a friend’s death in this way. I muted the set, Richard put his arm round me, and we sat saying nothing as the cricket and then the weather came on. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRichard only met Mark once, at the ninetieth-birthday dinner at the Tate, where two hundred guests sat down in a room that was hung for the occasion with his own gifts. Mark looked and sounded frail when he made his speech, but we were all on his side, and he was modest and generous, toasting Cara too, who was one day older than him. I wasn’t sure, when we spoke briefly with them later, if they were wounded or quietly relieved that Giles wasn’t there. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Mark Hadlow’s story, from the press point of view, there has always been an irksome absence of scandal—an ethical businessman, a major philanthropist, married to one woman for seventy years; not a hermit, indeed ‘a generous host’, but with no taste for the limelight: he was said to have turned down both a knighthood and a peerage, and none of the galleries and halls he endowed bears his own name. He can only be got at, for invasive gossip, through his children. Nobody has much on Lydia, except that she once appeared topless in a Warhol movie, and died in a car-crash in France five years ago. But Giles, of course, is everywhere, and so fiercely opposed to all his father stood for that Mark’s life-work is eclipsed by his son’s destructive career. ‘Mark Hadlow: Brexit Minister’s millionaire father dies,’ said the \u003ci\u003eTimes\u003c\/i\u003e; while the\u003ci\u003e Mail \u003c\/i\u003eput Giles first in the sentence: ‘Giles Hadlow’s father dies at 94’. The photo of the two of them uneasily together dated from the 1980s. It would be mad to say Giles killed Mark, but I wondered what his feelings about him were now—continued defiance, or some kind of guilty grief?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ‘Will you ring Cara?’ Richard said. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘I ought to, yes,’ I said, but the question made me wonder: ours was a long and unshakable friendship, but I felt shy of ringing her up. ‘Or perhaps I’ll write her a letter’—then felt there would be almost too much to say. I looked across at the mirror that reflected the bed, and seemed to frame us in a larger and more beautiful space. ‘To have money and do nothing but good with it—how rare is that?’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Well, pretty much unheard-of,’ said Richard. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thought, inexactly, of everything Mark had done for me, even before our first meeting at Woolpeck in my early teens. I pictured myself on that sunny weekend, my anxiety dressed up as self-possession, my cleverness hidden by nerves from the people who were hoping to see it. ‘The plain fact is,’ I said, ‘he changed my life.’ I can cry at will, on camera or on stage, night after night; but now I surprised myself. ‘I can’t imagine where I’d be without him.’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Oh, love . . .’ said Richard, with a consoling rub. ‘He was like the father you never had, I sometimes think.’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘We were never that close,’ I said, wary of this idea. ‘It was really just chance—if I hadn’t won the Hadlow Exhibition I would never have gone to that school.’\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘And you would never have met Giles.’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI thought of what Mum said, just before she died, when the campaign was launched: ‘To think we could all be at the mercy of your terrible friend!’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘They won’t win, Mum,’ I’d said. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Well, it won’t affect me,’ she said, ‘I’ll be gone, but you—and Richard . . .’ \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI looked again in the mirror, at the two old men in bed. Now Mum’s gone, and Mark’s gone, and here we are, with Giles all over the papers, all over the country, tearing up our future and our hopes.Winner of the Booker Prize; One of the New York Times Notable Books of the Year","brand":"Random House Trade Paperbacks","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48233457942757,"sku":"NP9780593243084","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780593243084.jpg?v=1767734320","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/our-evenings-isbn-9780593243084","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}