Latest news with #OurEvenings
Irish Examiner
10-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Graham Norton, Richard E Grant, Alan Hollinghurst... 10 to see at West Cork Literary Festival
Alan Hollinghurst: Our Evenings The Maritime Hotel, Friday, July 11 at 8.30pm Booker-prizewinning author Alan Hollinghurst will be in conversation with Sue Leonard at the Maritime Hotel on Friday, discussing his new novel Our Evenings - a dark and luminous and deeply affecting novel which portrays modern England through the lens of one man's acutely observed experience. Richard E. Grant: A Pocketful of Happiness The Maritime Hotel, Saturday, July 12 at 8.30pm Richard E. Grant launched to fame in 1987 when he starred in the black comedy film Withnail and I and went on to star in a wide variety of films, receiving an Oscar nomination for his performance in Can You Ever Forgive Me?in 2019. An avid reader, in 2021, he hosted the BBC's literary travel series Write Around the World with Richard E. Grant. The actor and writer will be in conversation with Rory O'Connell from Ballymaloe Cookery School on Saturday, discussing his memoir A Pocketful of Happiness, which was published in May 2023. John Creedon: This Boy's Heart The Maritime Hotel, Sunday, July 13 at 1.30pm John Creedon. John Creedon paints a colourful picture of a changing Ireland in This Boy's Heart: Scenes from an Irish Childhood, where he shares his stories of friendship, fun, family, and folklore. Creedon will be in conversation with librarian and author Jackie Lynam to discuss the heart-warming and revealing journey into an Irish boyhood. Somerville and Ross: Claire Connolly Marino Church, Sunday, July 13 at 3pm In November 2024, new editions of the beloved Irish classics Experiences of an Irish R.M. and The Real Charlotte by Edith Somerville and Martin Ross were published, including prefaces by Connolly, who is Professor of Modern English at University College Cork. She will be in conversation with Dr Danielle O'Donovan, an architectural historian and lifelong Somerville and Ross fan from West Cork. Neil Jordan: Amnesiac The Maritime Hotel, Monday, July 14 at 8.30pm Amnesiac is the moving memoir of Academy Award-winning film director, screenwriter and author Neil Jordan. Reflecting on both the ghosts of his past and his personal triumphs, his memoir is an intimate account of one of Ireland's greatest storytellers. Jordan will be in conversation with Cristín Leach at the Maritime Hotel on Monday, July 14. Eimear McBride: The City Changes Its Face The Maritime Hotel, Wednesday, July 16 at 8.30pm Eimear McBride will be in conversation with Cristín Leach discussing her novel The City Changes Its Face. Set in London in 1995, the novel reintroduces Eily and Stephen, the couple from McBride's earlier novel The Lesser Bohemians. A story of passion, possessiveness, and family, the novel explores a passionate love affair tested to its limits. Seán Ronayne: Nature Boy National Learning Network, Thursday, July 17 at 2.30pm Cork-born ornithologist and naturalist Seán Ronayne will be in conversation with Mike Ryan in the unique setting of the National Learning Network's outdoor amphitheatre on July 17. Ronayne will be known to many through the award-winning RTÉ documentary Birdsong, about his project to sound record all the regularly occurring bird species in Ireland. His book Nature Boy: A Journey of Birdsong and Belonging won the Dubray Biography of the Year at the 2024 An Post Irish Book Awards. Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O'Connor Means to Us Marino Church, Thursday, July 17 at 8.30pm Nothing Compares to You: What Sinead O'Connor Means to Us is a collection of essays edited by Sonya Huber and Martha Bayne. A celebration of the life and legacy of Sinéad O'Connor, the book explores themes such as gender identity, spirituality, artistic expression, and personal transformation. Three contributing authors, Martha Bayne, Mieke Eerkens and Allyson McCabe, will be in conversation with the Irish Examiner's Eoghan O'Sullivan. Wendy Erskine and Lisa Harding Marino Church, Friday, July 18 at 2.30pm Wendy Erskine. Wendy Erskine's debut novel The Benefactors and Lisa Harding's The Wildelings are two of the most highly anticipated novels of the year, one set in Belfast and the other in Dublin, and both raising important questions about class and social status. Erskine and Harding will be in conversation with Deirdre O'Shaughnessy at Marino Church on Friday, July 18. Graham Norton The Maritime Hotel, Friday, July 18 at 8.30pm One of the most treasured broadcasters and presenters in the UK and Ireland, Graham Norton is the author of five novels, Holding, A Keeper, Home Stretch, Forever Home, and Frankie, all of which became instant bestsellers both in the UK and Ireland. Holding, Home Stretch and Frankie have all won the Irish Book Award for Popular Fiction Book of the Year, and A Keeper and Forever Home were shortlisted for the same award. Norton will be in conversation with Ryan Tubridy at the Maritime Hotel on July 18. The West Cork Literary Festival takes place in Bantry from July 11 to July 18. Visit for more information.
Irish Examiner
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Author interview: ‘Gay life and history keeps on developing and changing'
Alan Hollinghurst is recovering from a nasty bug and is still a little under the weather when he chats to me from his home in London. 'I will do my best to sound intelligent,' he says. The British author has been garlanded with some of the most prestigious literary awards throughout his career, and is considered by many to be one of the great writers of our time. The reviews for his most recent novel, Our Evenings, the story of a gay Anglo-Burmese actor and his life across seven decades, have been glowing. As a former deputy editor of The Times Literary Supplement himself, does he pay attention to the critical response to his work? 'Occasionally, I am warned by a kind friend or a publicist to skip a review,' he says. 'And I do because there is no point, you end up arguing in your head with this person you don't know and it doesn't do you any good.' But generally I do read them and bringing out a book so rarely, I feel quite interested in how it is going to fare when it goes out into the world. Hollinghurst's debut novel The Swimming Pool Library, published in 1988, was described by writer Edmund White as 'the best book on gay life yet written by an English author'. Hollinghurst went on to be named one of Granta's best young British novelists in 1993. However, it was his fourth novel, The Line of Beauty, which really catapulted his work into the literary mainstream when it won the Booker Prize in 2004. It was an engrossing evocation of Thatcher's Britain, seen through the eyes of gay narrator Nick Guest — an outsider who is drawn into British high society. From today's vantage point, it is hard to imagine the fuss that surrounded the win; Hollinghurst chuckles about the newspaper headline that screamed, 'Gay sex wins Booker'. A great deal has changed in those two decades. 'Yes,' says Hollinghurst. 'A lot was happening already and gay fiction as a phenomenon really took on salience through the later '80s and '90s. 'But it hadn't broken into the echelons of Booker Prize shortlists and so on until that point, rather amazingly. 'I had been writing from a gay point of view for quite a while, so it did all seem rather like old hat to me.' It was an inevitable journalistic talking point about the whole thing and it didn't do any harm. The world of LGBTQ+ fiction is a completely different proposition now, and is flourishing thanks in no small part to writers such as Hollinghurst. 'The interesting thing of taking gay life and gay history as your subject is that it is a live subject, it keeps on developing and changing in ways that you couldn't have anticipated. 'Back in the '80s, it was all far more binary, gay, or straight. Now we are in a much more complex terrain of not so much defining as exploring sexuality. 'I love the sense that the whole thing has grown and become more complex and subtle,' he says. There are echoes of the political themes in The Line of Beauty to be found in Our Evenings, which takes in the rise of populism and Brexit although Hollinghurst is at pains to point out that is not the book's main concern — 'It is not, thank God, a Brexit novel'. Does he feel that what is happening in politics today is too fantastical to be portrayed realistically? 'The extreme acceleration in America, you couldn't keep up with it. My tendency has been not to write out of the immediate political moment,' he says. ' The Line of Beauty is set in the mid-'80s but it came out in 2004. Both the political moment of the Thatcher boom years and the extended moment of the Aids crisis, I had to let it settle before I saw how to deal with it.' The new book does take on the slightly more immediate thing of Brexit and that kind of nationalism. 'I address it fairly obliquely through the experience of somebody who is not in that world politically but on whom inevitably it impinges. 'There are writers who are up to the challenge of writing things that are more topical. I don't think that's generally in my nature.' The book is certainly elegiac in tone, with the protagonist Dave Win looking back on his youth in a very different Britain. Hollinghurst says it was 'awful' to watch Brexit unfolding. 'I am furious, incredulous, and very sad. I think it was an absolutely disastrous decision,' he says. 'We were led astray by implausible politicians. Nothing good whatsoever has come out of it.' Not unlike the character of Dave Win, who is an actor, Hollinghurst, aged 71, has been honing his craft across six decades now. In some ways, writing has become a more challenging process. 'I started writing in my early teens, I wrote appalling poems,' he says. 'The disconcerting thing about being a lifelong novelist is that I first imagined you worked out how to do it and after that it got easier and easier.' But I have found the reverse has been true. Each one is harder than the one before. 'There was a sort of ease and pleasure about writing my first book when I had a full-time job. 'I was writing it in the evenings and at weekends, and no-one knew anything about it, it was just this lovely thing that I was doing. 'I have never quite recaptured that sense of happiness in writing.' Of course, there are many more distractions now — although he is not really on social media, the online world still encroaches. 'When I was finishing Our Evenings and finding it a struggle, I went back 30 years, and I had the thing of having no phone or contact with the internet until 6pm,' he says. 'It was completely magical — you just take possession of your day again and you know you cannot be interrupted. 'It was like when I was writing in the '80s and I would just unplug the telephone in the morning. I do recommend it, it is absolutely wonderful.' Although it is slightly hellish when you go back on at six o'clock and you have 153 emails. He acknowledges that he has been fortunate to be able to ply his trade as a full-time writer for most of his career: 'I was lucky my first two novels both did very well. With sales of literary fiction going down, it is getting harder and harder. You really need another job. 'I am aware of the more perilous position of literary fiction and the problems of getting people to read anything longer than 140 words. 'It has become more cutthroat, the bid for public attention, and probably harder for new literary novelists to get established.' Hollinghurst has been enjoying some book-related travel, including a visit to the West Cork Literary Festival next week. Cork is a place he knows relatively well, having spent time in Skibbereen, and with his friend, the poet Bernard O'Donoghue, at his home place in Cullen. He is refreshingly forthright when I ask him if he is working on a book at the moment. 'Absolutely not,' he says. 'I am having a lovely time not writing anything. I usually feel quite emptied out when I get to publishing a book and it takes a year or two for the tank to refill. 'I'm far from starting anything else and I am very much enjoying not having that pressure. 'After a while I shall miss it and I shall long to be back in that other mysterious place messing around.' Alan Hollinghurst will be in conversation with Sue Leonard on Friday, July 11, at 8.30pm, The Maritime Hotel, Bantry, as part of the West Cork Literary Festival which takes place from July 11 to July 18; Read More Book review: Sublime characterisation and empathy make a novel to savour
The Guardian
24-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mishka Rushdie Momen review – the poignancy and power of Schubert unleashed
Two Schubert sonatas were the main works framing Mishka Rushdie Momen's programme in the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama's Steinway series. Given that both were in the minor mode – the A minor, D784 and the C minor, D958 – together they constituted quite a serious, heavyweight affair for a Sunday morning recital. A pianist of graceful poise and sensitivity, Momen has a highly fluent technique that allowed everything to carry well in this acoustic. And, despite seeming a slight slip of a thing, to use an old-fashioned phrase, in these sonatas she showed that she could unleash considerable power in Schubert's outbursts of high-volume dramatic tension, sometimes shocking in their immediacy. At the other extreme, her pianissimo was often pianississimo, so that lyrical lines, rather than quietly singing out, sounded understated and as a result curiously underwhelming. It was in the mercurial finale of the A minor sonata and the lilting, dance-like F major theme with its chromatic edge, poignant and piquant at every appearance, that Momen captured most expressively the happy/sad ambivalence of this composer's musical makeup. That same tendency to play on vast dynamic contrasts was present in the C minor sonata too, the first of Schubert's final three almost symphonic sonatas in which trauma and foreboding coexist with the consoling beauty of music. Again, it was the Allegro finale – febrile, fast and furious – that communicated best. Three pieces from Janáček's On an Overgrown Path, No 1 Naše večery (Our Evenings), No 9 V pláči (In Tears) and No 10, Sýček neodletěl! (The Barn Owl Has Not Flown Away!) formed a neat tripartite sequence. In these Moravian-inflected melodies, Momen negotiated the balance of serenity and volatility in a way which resonated with Schubert. Momen has written about her affinity for the keyboard music of William Byrd and this was manifest in her playing of his Prelude and Fantasia in A minor, MB 12 and 13. Here was fine rhythmic clarity and conviction, but with an element of playful fantasy too. It felt refreshing for being a foil for the big sonatas and, heard in this context was also, for many, an illuminating introduction to the Renaissance master. In recital at Wesley Centre, Harrogate, 2 June ; at Wigmore Hall, London, 8 June
New York Times
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Club: Let's Talk About Alan Hollinghurst's ‘Our Evenings'
The novel 'Our Evenings,' by Alan Hollinghurst, follows a gay English Burmese actor from childhood into old age as he confronts confusing relationships, his emerging sexuality, racism and England's changing political climate in the late 20th and early 21st century. It's the story of a life — beautifully related by a literary master whose 2004 novel 'The Line of Beauty' won the Booker Prize and was named to the Book Review's 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Reviewing 'Our Evenings' for us last year, Hamilton Cain wrote that the book 'is that rare bird: a muscular work of ideas and an engrossing tale of one man's personal odyssey as he grows up, framed in exquisite language, surrounding us like a Wall of Sound.' You can join our book club discussion in the comments here. We would love to hear your thoughts about this episode, and about the Book Review's podcast in general. You can send them to books@
New York Times
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Book Club: Read ‘Orbital,' by Samantha Harvey, With the Book Review
Welcome to the Book Review Book Club! Every month, we select a book to discuss with our readers. Sometimes that's a new book we're excited about and would love to introduce you to; other times, it's an older book that's back in the cultural spotlight. What do all of our selections have in common? They're great reads primed for robust, thoughtful conversations. Last month, we read 'Our Evenings,' by Alan Hollinghurst. (You can also go back and listen to our episodes on 'Small Things Like These,' 'James' and 'Intermezzo.') I have a confession: I've never been that excited about space. It's not that I dislike it; I've just never been able to fully grasp it, with all its vastness and mystery. Intellectually, I recognize that it is fearsome and awe-inspiring, but emotionally, I've never felt it. Until I read 'Orbital,' by Samantha Harvey. The novel, which won the Booker Prize last year, has a tight, poetic frame: We follow one day in the lives of six people working on a space station above Earth, orbiting the planet 16 times every 24 hours. But this is not a saga of adventure or exploration. It's a quiet meditation on what it means to be human, prompted by a series of personal reckonings each character faces while floating 250 miles above their home. Space unlocks something in these characters as they look back on the planet from orbit and reflect on life's difficulties — and witnessing that made me cherish Earth a little bit more and unlocked in me a deeper appreciation of the cosmos too. I hope it'll unlock something in you, too. In February, the Book Review Book Club will read and discuss 'Orbital,' by Samantha Harvey. We'll be chatting about the book on the Book Review podcast that airs on Feb. 28, and we'd love for you to join the conversation. Share your thoughts about the novel in the comments section of this article by Feb. 17, and we may mention your observations in the episode. Here's some related reading to get you started: We can't wait to discuss the book with you. In the meantime, happy reading!
