Alan Hollinghurst: "I'm pretty good at defying expectations"

An entire life, or almost, and, through it, half a century of English history, from the 1960s to Brexit. Alan Hollinghurst's Evenings is a big book, as are all those by the 71-year-old writer. You settle in comfortably, nothing is missing – neither charm nor humor, neither satire nor heartache. Seeing Dickens in a British novelist isn't terribly original, but it's definitely Great Expectations that we think of in the preamble, as if Pip had a lunch date with the old and rich Miss Havisham. Dave Win is a sixty-year-old actor of mixed race, and Cara is the one who, in other times, with her husband Mark, got him a scholarship to a prestigious school. "I sometimes wonder what you thought of us back then," she tells him at 90. From there, we return to adolescence, to the age when Dave, from a working-class background and a guest at his "benefactors'" home, discovered privilege, a love of theater, and the indelible emotion caused by the sight of a "fluffy belly" in a locker room.