A beautifully written, intricate portrait of London, its shifting cast of inhabitants and those who love it, even when they don't even recognize that themselves. I wasn't necessarily the target audience for this novel, I salute the author's skill and would recommend it to a younger readership.

Oisin McKenna is one to watch. The prose in 'Evenings and Weekends' is absolutely masterful. Each character is so rich with emotion and you feel as though you know them after only a few hundred words. Set against the backdrop of a scorching London summer, this novel perfectly encapsulates the heat of desire and burning shame. I loved simmering in this world, and couldn't bear to put it down.

Fairly enjoyable but not as groundbreaking as I wanted it to be. I don’t feel like it stands out amongst the contemporary literary fiction market and neither the characters nor plot made much of an impact on me - especially as they all seemed quite transient, unreliable, and inconsistent. I came away feeling like the author didn’t really know what they were trying to say with the novel - although perhaps it’s me simply not getting what they were trying to say?!

This book was so amazing - I raced through it. Lyrical, moving and engrossing, a gorgeous portrait of a pre-pandemic London

I really wanted to enjoy this as the story line really intrigued me and I love Irish authors. Unfortunately, it didn't grip me like I needed it to and it was a struggle to get into. I don't think this is to the fault of the author as it was written very beautifully and I can see why some people would enjoy it. The book just wasn't for me.

Evenings and Weekends is set in London, centring a number of characters who are linked together. There's Maggie, 12 weeks pregnant and about to move back to Basildon with her partner Ed. Then there’s her best friend Phil, Phil's brother (and Ed's best friend) Callum, Phil and Callum's mother Rosaleen and her neighbour Joan (who is also Ed's mother), as well as a smattering of other characters. Set over the span of a weekend in July 2019, a heatwave brings tensions and secrets to the surface and will change their lives forever.

I love books set over the span of a short space of time, like a weekend, so this is super fun. And I love books where people are all connected in different ways, that you can see like a spider's web. It really shows the intricacies of life and how messy it can be. Personally I felt like there were maybe too many characters. It meant some of the really central ones didn't get the proper time to have the spotlight on their stories and that some of the more secondary characters you didn't know at all, it was very surface level. If one or two POVs were dropped, I think this would have shone brighter for me. I had to write out a list of the characters and their relationships with each other at the beginning as I found it a bit confusing!

Overall I did enjoy it, I really wanted to see if and how the secrets would come out and how their relationships with each other would change, I was very invested in the plot. Evenings and Weekends highlights the complexity and messiness that is life and all that comes with it: friendships, family, sexuality, love, heartache, illness, grief and uncertainty.

An intriguing read, character driven, and well plotted. The story of a group of people in the hottest summer up today in london.
Well plotted, it made me feel the heat and kept me reading.
A bit slow at times but I appreciated the character development
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A summery, seductive love letter to life in London: this un-put-downable novel introduces us to thirty-something Maggie and Ed in June 2019, as the couple are on the cusp of quitting expensive Hackney for a cheaper, more achievable life in Basildon, near to where both of them grew up. Maggie is newly pregnant and being closer to their families makes sense for their futures, but leaving this sparkling, intoxicating metropolis proves to be harder than first thought. Is having a baby really the next adventure, or the end of life as they know it? Maggie needs to tell her best friend Phil that she’s leaving the city, but before she can reach him, Phil bumps into Ed in Liverpool Street Station, on the edge of doing something unexpected – should Phil tell Maggie? He wrestles with this new layer of life to consider, alongside whether he should quit his soul-sapping job and heady confusion about growing feelings for his flatmate Keith, who’s technically in an open relationship but is unavailable in the way Phil wants – or is that what he wants? Meanwhile elsewhere in the suburbs, Phil’s mum Rosaleen is trying to meet up with her son to tell him face to face about her recent cancer diagnosis, yet his slippery ever-moving schedule and shifting priorities keeps him beyond her grasp. Saturday night looms: will everything come together as planned, or will it come crashing down around their ears – or, more painfully to admit, will life just keep rolling on whatever happens, like the silent Thames which stars in the very start of this novel? The duo’s decisions ripple out like breeze-born waves across the surface of a swimming pond, interfering and aligning with their friends’ and families’ lives and choices in a series of beautifully-drawn vignettes. It’ll make you long for post-work drinks outside busy inner city pubs on balmy summer evenings, and that feeling of alignment – everyone looking for something to happen, as McKenna puts it – in a shared pursuit of the hypothetical myriad possibilities on offer to those lucky enough to live near the centre of our capital city.

Reviewed in Cambridge Edition May issue

Only okay account of being young and trying to find your way in contemporary London. Felt like a story told many times before and tipped into cliche rather too much.

Two words 'Loved it'!

I'm calling it the new Normal People. I can't believe this is a debut , not only is the writing great but the characters are so real and the setting is just on point , it's also a love letter to London . There's a lot going on in the novel but you never feel overwhelmed , instead you just want to read about all the characters and their lives, you are part of the friendship group. . It shouts BBC adaptation and i am here for this!

Great debut and I cannot wait to read more from this author

From GoodReads:
Set over one hot, hot weekend in London, this book definitely grows on you and becomes a real page turner. Tensions build, secrets floating and unearthed, relationships on the up and down - all with an eclectic cast of characters, each with their positves and their flaws (Rosaleen surprisingly my favourite by far). I'm willing the outcomes I want by the end.
Beautifuuly written, what is next...

Evenings and Weekends is wonderful debut by Oisín McKenna. Set in London on the hottest weekend in summer 2019, we meet a cast of interconnected characters and learn about their troubles and dreams.

The novel had wonderful atmosphere and pace, McKenna captures the heat, hedonism and despair that has come to define London. He also writes small town, older characters with warmth and tenderness. Initially, the language and relationships felt very zeitgeist-y in a way that made it less believable but this tapers off as the novel gets into its flow. And the ending, without spoilers, is fantastic - political, both searing and poignant.

Fans of character-driven novels, look no further for your book of the summer.

Many thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for the eARC.

Following the characters over the course of one hot summer weekend in London and Essex, Evenings and Weekends was nothing less than an astonishing book. A book I loved to its very bones. A book I will carry with me in my heart and mind. It is a book about relationships. About friendships. About family, About the messy ties that bind us. About queerness. About class. Most of all, it is a book about the city itself. A book that pulses with energy, with heat, with lust, with that sense of being in your late 20s and feeling invincible and fucked up and beautiful and ugly all at once. Each character was written with such compassion, and felt so incredibly real to me, to the extent that days later I found myself wondering how Rosaleen's treatment was going and how Ed was faring. Even Louis, who it would be easy to dismiss (the passage where he talks to Phil's mum Rosaleen, a call centre worker from Basildon, about a book he's read - a "historical materialist analysis which drew comparisons between the development of call centre working conditions and the development of factory working conditions in the nineteenth century" - is nothing short of brilliant) is given a depth that belies the reader's initial impression of him as a privileged rich boy. This is a book that will appeal to fans of Sally Rooney and absolutely deserves the wide readership her books have received.

everyone in this book felt so raw, and so real. i loved how messy and authentic everyone was - nothing felt sugar coated and everyone felt freer to connect with because they were genuine.

although at times i found the amount of povs to be a bit clunky/confusing, i thought the experiences of class, queerness, love and ultimately finding yourself to be so interesting and genuine.

despite everyone being at major points in their lives, it was interesting to see them at their most vulnerable rather than everyone feeling full steam of head. the writing really did make me feel like i was reading something truly special!

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna is a very 'in' type of novel. trying to be something in the realms of rooney and mostly managing to do so.

I’m incredibly stingy with my 5 star reviews, but god, does Evenings & Weekends deserve its place among the small handful I’ve given out this year.

During the hottest London summer on record, we follow a host of characters: pregnant and broke Maggie; her secretive boyfriend Ed, hiding a past with Maggie’s best friend Phil; who’s falling for his housemate Keith; who’s boyfriend isn’t sure how he feels about their open relationship; and Phil’s mother Rosaleen, who in the face of a cancer diagnosis is coming to terms with a lost love of her own. All face their own problems, and each other’s, over a sweltering weekend.

I loved this for a host of reasons, but I’ll summarise two.

It’s an absolute masterclass in juggling a host of characters and important topics, keeping hold of plotlines and the reader’s focus while still packing the most gorgeous emotional punch. I felt so much for each of these characters, most navigating queerness and their individual issues in their own ways, and the messy ins and outs of their relationships with each other unfolded so well. We could have trimmed the fat by ditching some of the supporting character POVs (and spent more time with others – I adored Rosaleen), but Mckenna has crafted such a detailed little bubble that even those interludes were charming.

Secondly, it summarises so succinctly my feelings about London. I want to press this book into the hands of my fellow Londoners every time they moan that London’s a little bit rubbish, because E&W so succinctly summarises that yes! It’s mega rubbish! It’s grimy and expensive and sticky and gross! But it’s also got such a unique sort of magic that’s difficult to replicate; it’s got a dreaminess and perseverance to it that lets you feel like you’ve Made It, even if all you’re doing is crossing a bridge home from work just as the sun hits the over-polluted river.

A gorgeous, gorgeous slice-of-life debut. Happy publication month, and thank you for my NetGalley arc 4th Estate!

Evenings and Weekends is a striking debut novel by Irish author Oisín McKenna. With echoes of Sally Rooney and Zadie Smith, it’s set in 2019 in London and the cast of main characters - Maggie, Ed, Callum and Phil- are all harbouring secrets.
Maggie and Ed are expecting and due to move out of London and back to their hometown. Phil is on the cusp of a serious relationship but has a history with Ed and his brother Callum is about to get married. The characters are relatable yet frustratingly immature, though each goes through a period of self-discovery in the book.
The many strands of this story - including many substrands - are brought together and resolved in a convincing way. I am not a particular fan of this style of writing - a lot of detail and a slow-moving plot - but it’s kept me entertained enough to finish it.
With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

An assured, determined, siren call of a voice, I was completely pulled in by the first page.
Evenings and Weekends shines a light on all the things we keep inside and all the things we want to say. Hidden hopes, dreams and disappointments burst out from these pages; the way we try to connect but miss, grazing the edges of togetherness. McKenna is astute, revealing tiny intimacies, the banal that builds a life, and the blazing brilliance of those perfect moments of connection.
Perfect for Pride month, this beaut of a novel beautifully describes the pain and guilt of internalised homophobia whilst portraying the joys of a queer community and the highs and hopefulness of gay love.

How to sum up Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna in one word? Zesty (in the modern sense).

Set over a hot, sweaty few summer days in London in 2019, we are introduced to a cast of connected characters, all of whom are at a crossroads in life. Maggie is pregnant and struggling to make ends meet, about to move back to Basildon in Essex but still harbouring dreams of working full time as an artist. Ed is in a relationship with Maggie but is haunted by his past and questions over his sexuality. Maggie's best friend Phil is living in a communal warehouse and is in a situationship with one of his housemates Carl, who is in a non-monogamous relationship with Louis. Rosaleen is Phil's mother and she's been diagnosed with cancer. She's also haunted by the ghosts of her past in Ireland and worries for her two sons, the other of whom (Callum) is a drug dealer about to marry his girlfriend Holly.

Running alongside all of this is a whale beached on Bermondsey Beach being rescued by a Princess Diana lookalike and newly crowned queer icon, and a crumbling Conservative government under Theresa May.

There's a lot going on in this frenetic-paced novel - perhaps just a few too many characters - but it's full of humanity, humour, love, sex and heartache, and it's hard not to get swept along with it. While very different, its atmospheric chaos and vibrancy reminded me of Brick Lane by Monica Ali and White Teeth by Zadie Smith. If you love a hot city summer novel, you've just found your dream book. 4/5 stars

Thank you to Oisin McKenna, 4th Estate and NetGalley for the ARC copy of this book.

Evenings and weekends follows the lives of a beautifully colourful cast of characters over the hottest weekend of the year in London. Each of them has an important secret to share with someone they love, and now is the time to bare all.

This is very much a character driven book, and all those characters have been written so well. They are so complex, and although there are so many different perspectives in the book (which I loved), you feel as though you know each of them really well by the end of the book. Maggie and Phil were my favourites, but I have a special place in my heart for Rosaleen too.