Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna

 

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna 

Tiny Overview

2019 London is full to the brim with relationship problems and a whale. People are secretly gay and complicated secrets plus pregnancy equals disaster. 

Themes:

• Literary Fiction
• Contemporary Fiction
• LGBTQ
• Aging
• Belonging
• Class
• Family
• Friendship
• Honesty
• Identity
• Loss
• Love
• Memory
• Politics

Context

McKenna was inspired to create this novel after ten years in theater and performance. Much like Phil, he was living in a 12 person warehouse in London. He wanted to fit many themes together without compromising one another, as well as making it easy to read and hard to put down, from Writer's Digest.

My Waffling

This book was recommended to me by a friend. And God did it scratch the itch created by reading Ordinary People. I think they are alike in many ways, and not just because they're set in London. I think this book was amazing, it was definitely a better and easier read than The Last Murder At The End Of The World. 

It does, unfortunately have the age old problem of being a tragic LGBTQ book. The only gay is in an unfulfilling throuple type relationship  and his mother is at least bi, longing for a long gone passed away best friend. Like I have previously stated, it's hard to find a gay book that is not tragic or reading some authors fantasy. However, there was a brief lesbian couple, they did not have much time together in the book as one of them was a very brief character.

It is mad that this book takes place over 2-3 days. If my life was this hectic in one weekend it would surely be my last one.

At the end of my lovely time reading this book, I then googled the author, and this is their only book!! This was a very unfortunate surprise. 

4/5