'Our evenings' by Alan Hollinghurst.

My rating: 3 (out of 5) stars

I don't read very much queer 'literary fiction'. Those I have, I've mostly enjoyed. This, though, was different. 

Alan Hollinghurst is a Booker Prize-winning author who's lauded and lionised. A new novel from him is something of an event. I read the description, ummed and aahed, then finally bit the bullet. It's a long read - 16 and a half hours - and for that, I want to feel engaged. Was I? No.

Hollinghurst's writing style borders on perfect: word choice, story flow, descriptions all rise up off the page to paint their pictures. That was probably what kept me going. The narrative content didn't.

Really, I should've read the blurb more carefully. I'm not a fan of slow, decades-spanning tales, so I guess I started on the wrong foot. The novel follows the life of Dave Win, who's half-Burmese, as he navigates school, college, discovering himself, and carving out a career in the theatre. Maybe it's because I haven't followed anything like the same path, but I didn't really relate. The amount of time spent while Win was at school in the 1960s and early 70s bored me rigid. Part of the problem was a lack of variety in tone. Every incident and thought and reflection hovered around the same pitch. There were no real highs or lows; no joy or hot, vivid anger. 

In the end, I 'flicked' through the last 3 hours or so, desperate to finish but also not to waste that amount of time on reading something unrewarding. Oh well, not one for the reread pile.