Photo-Illustration: Vulture
Mirrors are everywhere in Alan Hollinghurst’s new novel, Our Evenings. Dave Win, the theater actor who narrates the book, is constantly running into reflections of himself, in changing rooms, shop windows, his childhood home. Dave is gay and biracial; he was raised by his white mother in a small town in England, the result of a brief romance she had with a Burmese man while working as a secretary for the colonial government. His is a lonely upbringing, marked by a relentless sense of exposure: When people see him, they see someone who belongs elsewhere. When Dave looks at himself, he’s not sure what to see.
Neither, at times, is his creator. This is new terrain for Hollinghurst, a pioneer of gay literature…
