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OUR EVENINGS

Hollinghurst continues to amaze and delight, hitting both the most delicate grace notes and portentous chords perfectly.

The fictional memoir of a gay biracial British actor of rare intelligence and elegance, over a half decade of social change.

Hollinghurst's seventh novel features a narrator who, like his creator, is about 70: David Win—the dark-skinned son of a British woman and a man she met while working as a typist in Burma after World War II—was raised by his mother on her own in provincial England. The story opens with a fairly recent event: the death of Mark Hadlow, a mentor whose family offered a scholarship that allowed David to attend an elite prep school from the age of 13 in the early 1960s. Along with the challenges he faced there due to his race and class, he was often targeted by Hadlow's son Giles, a bully who we know has grown up to be a right-wing member of parliament in the era of Brexit, even now "tearing up our future and our hopes." The first half of the book relies on what Win calls his "famous memory" to unfold the story of his adolescence—one brilliant section is set during a seaside holiday when his head whips back and forth between a good-looking Italian waiter, the men on the beach in their bathing suits, and his dressmaker mother and her customer Mrs. Croft, funder of this vacation, now revealed to be much more than a friend. The expansive architecture of this book fluidly slips you from one phase of David's life to the next, examining the ups and downs of his acting career and his love affairs—and then suddenly there's an ending you will likely find yourself reading several times so you can fully take in its subtlety, power, and emotion.

Hollinghurst continues to amaze and delight, hitting both the most delicate grace notes and portentous chords perfectly.

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024

ISBN: 9780593243060

Page Count: 496

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024

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THE WOMEN

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

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THE BLUE HOUR

This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.

The discovery that a revered artist’s sculpture contains a human bone sets off scandal and violence.

Art historian James Becker has what seems like a sweet deal. He’s the curator of the collection of the Fairburn Foundation, housed at a stately home owned by the Lennox family: Sebastian, Becker’s best friend, and his bitter mother, Lady Emmeline. Becker’s wife, Helena, was Sebastian’s fiancee first, but they’re all very civilized about it and happily awaiting the birth of her baby. The centerpiece of the Fairburn collection is works by the late Vanessa Chapman, an artist about whom Becker wrote his thesis, and with whom he is somewhat obsessed. Partly, it’s because of her great talent, but she was also a glamorous figure, a beauty who, as she became successful, sequestered herself on an isolated Scottish tidal island called Eris. She had a dark side—lots of stormy relationships, plus a philandering mooch of a husband who vanished without a trace a few decades ago. Her reputation, though, has risen after her death—so much so that the Fairburn has loaned some of her works to the Tate Modern. That’s where a forensic anthropologist sees one of her sculptures, made of found objects that include what’s described as an animal bone. The scientist is sure the bone is human, and soon Becker finds himself scrambling to prevent scandal. Vanessa willed her works and papers to the foundation, but some of them are still on Eris, guarded by her longtime friend Grace Haswell. A retired doctor, Grace lived with Vanessa off and on over the years and nursed her through her fatal cancer. It was a surprise when Vanessa left her estate not to Grace but to Douglas Lennox, Emmeline’s husband and Sebastian’s father. Douglas was Vanessa’s gallerist and lover, but the two had a nasty falling-out. Sebastian is so frustrated by Grace’s refusal to turn over all of the bequest that he’s ready to sue her, but Becker believes he can negotiate, so off to the the island he goes. He finds far more treachery and shocking secrets than he expected, past and present alike. Hawkins keeps her cast tight, her wild setting ominous, and her plot moving fast.

This propulsive thriller twists into the dark and bloody underbelly of the world of fine art.

Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024

ISBN: 9780063396524

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Mariner Books

Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024

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