Our Evenings

Except for the flash-forward Prologue, the novel is told chronologically by the first-person narrator, Dave Win, who is also the protagonist. While the Prologue is set in 2016, the early chapters are set in 1962. Thus, the entire timespan of the novel is from 1962 to 2016, a period of 54 years, with a Coda set in 2020; the long period positions Dave’s life against the backdrop of the culture and politics of the United Kingdom.

The contrast between Dave’s upbringing and the Hadlow estate highlights the novel’s interest in class as a feature of British society. Dave attends Brompton, a UK public school—a term equivalent to what would be called a private school in the US. It is a fee-paying school; Dave, who comes from a working-class family but is bright, observant, and perceptive, can only go because he has won an academic scholarship, the Hadlow Exhibition. Otherwise, Dave’s social class would have precluded him from socializing with the wealthy, upper-class Hadlows or attending a prestigious school like Bampton. Mark’s luxury Jaguar—a revered make of car in England at that time—reveals the Hadlows’ wealth and superior social status. After growing up in his mother’s more modest house, this is Dave’s first exposure to life in a different social class, and he feels the “reflected glory” of being with Mark (40). At the same time, Dave is highly aware of his dependence on the Hadlows; he is scrupulously polite to his upper-class hosts, and despite repeated questioning, he refrains from identifying Giles as a bully or commenting on the violence he’s observed at school.

This section introduces the aggressive and belligerent Giles, who bullies Dave with verbal insults and petty acts of violence. The two are the same age, and Giles will reappear frequently throughout the novel as an antagonist whose animosity toward Dave in particular, and eventually anyone not white in general, will affect the course of UK politics. Here, Giles’s bullying is revealed to be at least partly motivated by internalized antigay prejudice; Giles is clearly harmed by the inability to openly engage in Discovering and Accepting One’s Sexual Orientation without stigma. Instead, Giles gives expression to commonplace antigay attitudes of the time when he refers to one of the teachers at Bampton, Mr. Hudson, as a “ponce” (24)—a slur used to refer to gay men. Giles climbing into bed with Dave is partly an assertion of dominance and partly actual sexual interest. Dave does not agree with Lydia that Giles is aggressive toward him out of jealousy; instead, it is because Giles senses something that Dave describes vaguely as the “main reason Giles want[s] to hurt [him]” (45)—Dave’s emerging sense of his sexual orientation.

The novel shows how Dave is affected by Racism and Prejudice when Uncle George assumes that Dave is not English because he is dark-skinned and his father was Burmese. These three chapters are set in 1962—the date is exact because George refers to the coup that took place in Burma (known as Myanmar since 1989) in that year as “this latest business” (31). English people of that time did not often meet people of color; widespread immigration from the colonies and former colonies of the British Empire began in the late 1960s, and until then, England was a racially homogeneous country. Dave makes it clear that George is not the first person to bring up the matter of his racial status and origins. He has had to deal with it many times before. Moreover, his knowledge of his Burmese heritage is very limited: His mother does not talk about it much, and Dave has never been to Burma. As far as Dave his concerned, he is English since he was born in England and since the only parent he has known is his English mother. However, this incident with George suggests that Dave is often made to feel like an outsider by those around him.

Hollinghurst also explores a more specific element of this prejudice: racial bias in the theatre. The visit of actress Elise Hadlow reveals Dave’s early interest in acting. He is also proficient enough in French to read Le Grand Meaulnes, a 1913 coming-of-age novel by Alain-Fournier. Dave’s early gift for mimicry, which earns him some popularity at school, is the first clue to his gift for acting that is just beginning to emerge. However, although the young Dave has not yet decided on an acting career, the experienced Elise is aware that actors of color are typecast because of “how people see [them]” (47). She has worked with Algerian and Indian actors in England and France, where they “by and large have to play what we call the mauvais rôles” (47)—they are cast as antagonists, reflecting the suspicion, hatred, and other ingrained harmful stereotypes of white society toward people of color.