I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times book review, and this is the book review podcast.

On this week's episode, our monthly book club discussion hosted by our editor, M.J. Franklin.

Let's turn to him now.

Thank you. M.J. Franklin. Let's turn to him now. Hello, and welcome to another book club episode of the book review podcast. I'm M.J. Franklin. I'm an editor here at the New York Times Book Review,

and for this month's Book Review Book Club, we're talking about Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst.

Alan Hollinghurst is a literary titan with a remarkable 30-plus year career.

His first novel, The Swimming Pool Library, published in 1988, and The New York Times profiled

Hollinghurst when that book came out, saying, quote,

An exceptional novel, The Swimming Pool Library, deepens our understanding of the coupling of romance

and elegy.

In 2004, several years later and several books later, Hollinghurst won the Booker Prize

for his novel The Line of Beauty.

Two of his other books, The Folding Star, and The Stranger's Child, were also nominated for the

Booker of the years they were released. Overall, Hollinghurst has written many books, and with his

robust catalog, he's become known for poetically capturing the contours and evolution of gay life

in Britain. Our Evenings is his latest, and I thought, an iconic author with a new book, that sounds

like a book club to me. And it's not a book club without friends, and joining me to discuss

there are a handful of my wonderful colleagues. We have a mix of new and returning voices.

We're just going to go around the table. First, we have Emily Aiken. Hi, Emily. Hi, MJ. Emily is a fellow editor here at the book review,

and you may remember her from our My Brilliant Friend book club. Welcome back. Thank you. It's a

pleasure to be here. Emily, I also want to shout out a few weeks ago you wrote a wonderful essay

about the plagiarism plot and how and why it's become the salient idea in contemporary

...