Set in London during a long hot weekend in the summer of 2019 we meet a bunch of friends (and their parents) as they navigate their way through life and love.

This book grew on me so much. Usually I know straight away whether a book is for me or not. But this took me about 10% before I got into it. There's an incident in a toilet (not as bad as it sounds) and from that moment on I was invested.

This book turned out to be a bit special. I fell in love with the characters of Ed, Maggie, Phil and Rosaleen.

It's chaotic and complicated. Messy and modern. Loved the Irish thread throughout the book. And the hope and dream of a Corbyn government.

A wonderful, assured book about queer interconnecting relationships during a sweltering summer in London. Each character is sympathetically drawn and stays with the reader long after the novel is finished, the heat of the city streets is palpable and the emotional charge between the different personalities is strong and believable. Highly recommended.

A whale is stuck in the Thames and London is sweltering in a heatwave, while a group of Londoners are struggling with decisions, large and small. Maggie is pregnant and planning to leave London to raise her baby back in her hometown with her boyfriend, Ed, a delivery courier cycling across London in the heat. Her best friend, Phil, is in love with his housemate, while his mother, Rosaleen, is trying to tell him about her cancer diagnosis.

I thought Evenings and Weekends was an interesting exploration of how we communicate with others and what’s left unsaid. The backdrop of economic precarity that so many young Londoners face shapes the characters’ lives, inevitably influencing their relationships. Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, was my favourite character and I would have happily read a book entirely about her story. While I normally love stories with multiple characters and perspectives, I found it was slightly overplayed in Evenings and Weekends, which made it harder for me to connect to some of the more peripheral characters.

Overall, I liked Evenings and Weekends and I am definitely intrigued to see what McKenna writes next. I had seen numerous amazing reviews of this book prior to picking it up so I had high expectations going in and I think it suffered a little bit because of that but I’m still glad I read it.

I would rate it 3.5 stars.

As somebody in their late 20’s I could really connect with this book. All the different characters and how their lives weren’t necessarily panning out the way they expected was very poignant. There was humour but also tough topics giving the book a well balanced feel.

It’s possible that there is a generational divide here, but I am so tired of reading about solipsistic, self-obsessed young people who lead self-indulgent lifestyles, drinking excessively, taking drugs and engaging in frequent sexual encounters whilst lacking any sense of responsibility or commitment and seemingly unable to communicate with each other in any meaningful way. Perhaps I’m just too old to relate to them, but surely a good writer should be able to convince me that they are in fact worth reading about. This book singularly failed for me. I couldn’t have cared less about any of the shallow characters depicted within and found myself skipping large chunks towards the end. There are too many superfluous characters who have little to do with the main narrative drive – and indeed there isn’t much of a narrative drive in any case. The novel covers one long tedious weekend in the hot summer of 2019 in London as the motley crew attempt to grapple with the usual range of issues of contemporary life with remarkably little success except to make themselves and others miserable. There’s nothing new here, no new insight, and the inclusion of a whale as symbol is never fully explored. If you’re going to include a whale, then please make it count for something. I accept that the writing isn’t bad, but the whole thing seemed banal and pointless to me.

A book that's queer as.. count me in. A whole lot of characters with a whole lot of life shiz, you'd think it'd be hard to keep up but really it's not.

Was I skeptical at first yeah but persevering was way worth it. All the characters are woven together perfectly.. and most of them are hiding a secret or too. Let's face it these characters were so so relatable.

The whole story was raw and emotional and just beautiful. An absolutely fantastic debut novel. Super excited to see what comes next.

This was enjoyable and started strong with a whale washing up in London , an unusual opening and setting. I thought the writing was good and love Irish authors, but I think it never hit its peak. Everything takes place over a weekend in London during a heatwave, with flashbacks to explain how our characters ended where they are.
Rosaleen, one of the main characters mothers and main character in her own right was probably my favourite point of view. I think there were too many characters and it meandered , but it did definitely show the messiness and complexities of life.
I'm looking forward to what Oisin Mckenna brings out in the future.
Thank you to NetGalley & 4th Estate for the e-arc!

An addictive read. Such an atmospheric depiction of a hot summer weekend in London. All of the characters were flawed and lost but I was so invested in their stories, McKenna builds the tension between them all in a subtle yet powerful way. A really impressive and unique book. This is also the third book that I have read in the past year that begins with a whale washing up on the shore, what a niche literary trend!

This book is something that will stay with me for quite a while after I finished reading the last page. Adding this book to the list of my all-time favourites. Cannot believe that this is a debut novel.

I would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book for review.

Evenings and Weekends
By Oisín McKenna

The publishers are marketing this book as "for fans of Sally Rooney", and I wonder if that has become a bit of a backfire for them. Those who love the entangled, angsty relationship trope will love this, but I fear that those who despise certain elements in Rooney's writing will be turned off this book by the comparison, and actually it's a lot more accessible than that. It's less navel-gazey, has a broader set of perspectives (including a woman in her late fifties) and most importantly for those who absolutely refuse to read unpunctuated writing, it's got all the speech marks you need to keep up.

It might be useful to note down cast and their relationships as they appear, because there are many, and they all interact in some way or other. As a character driven novel set over a short period of time, its these interactions drive the narrative and McKenna employs a clever device at the end of most chapters to remind us of just how interconnected all these folks are.

The rising action in each of the characters arcs converge over one weekend, and I couldn't help thinking that this is rather like a summer version of Love Actually. It is told with such humour and tenderness despite the potentially heavy topics.

I find myself still thinking about the various relationships and I feel that I would get much from a second read that I didn't notice the first time.

Thanks to #NetGalley and #4thestatebooks for honouring my late request for an ARC in exchange for an honest review

This book was a perfect for a humid summer weekend, and I loved every page of it. An excellent intertwining of four old friends, each character felt fleshed out and three dimensional. The whale sub plot was a refreshing way of meshing the characters together, and didn’t feel overwrought or hemmed in. This book was well written and easily one of my top 5 books I’ve read this year, I can feel a re-read coming soon!

Evenings and Weekends by Oisin Mckenna is a highly engaging book of interconnectedness and perceptions to in multiple voices and with such gentle and lyrical prose. A real delight

Thank you to 4th Estate | Fourth Estate and Oisin McKenna for this lovely ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

Such a beautiful book--the perfect read to have in your bag for sweaty summer subway rides. I'll be recommending this one to everyone who lets me get a word in edgewise this year.

Oisín McKenna is the Irish millennial version of Virginia Woolf.

This gorgeous LGBTQ story is written from multiple viewpoints over a weekend is the most lifelike depiction of living in London I’ve ever read. McKenna perfectly describes the beautiful messiness of life, death, love and sexuality.

I would have given it 5 stars but the amount of characters made it a bit confusing at times.

Thanks to NetGalley for the copy in exchange for a review.

This book is about everything, then not a lot, all at the same time. There was something about the lovely gentle writing style that got me hooked straight away.
So many different personal stories going, I wondered what could possibly be next.
It was funny in places, it was sad and traumatic in places, and it was just life.
Life with people that can't talk to each other and some don't feel able to be their true self.
Lots of different themes - sexuality, homophobia, abortion, drugs, rape, cancer.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Evenings & Weekends unfolds during a sweltering London heatwave in 2019, centering around a solstice party attended by a group of young millennials. At the heart of the story is Maggie, a 30-year-old who, while pregnant, grapples with the looming uncertainty of her future and questions whether this pregnancy signifies a final act of impulsiveness. Her partner, Ed, a former bike courier, eagerly anticipates their future together, unaware of his complex history with Maggie’s best friend, Phil.

Phil, entangled in his own dilemmas, is falling for his housemate Keith, who is himself in a stable relationship, all while Phil despises his office job. The narrative also introduces Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, who is making a journey to London to deliver the heart-wrenching news of her cancer diagnosis to her son in person.

The characters are forced to confront their pasts and the trajectories of their lives, leading to potential transformations.

Evenings & Weekends is a masterful debut that left me deeply moved and engrossed from start to finish. The novel’s eloquence and emotional depth are extraordinary, making it a truly unforgettable read.

4.5/5.

For a debut novel this is certainly striking. Set largely over one weekend in a sweltering London, which becomes a character in itself, in the summer of 2019, the plot focuses on a small group of people who knew each other at school in Basildon and their parents. A number of the group are queer and all are damaged in some ways.

Initially, although the characters do become quite distinct in the end, I found it hard to distinguish between their different voices, their introspective thoughts feel similar . London is depicted with all its crowded, dirty, mesmerising, fascinating and compelling faces - and there is a streak of real anger about the ways in which young people in their 30s in low paying jobs cannot really afford to live there. The city is described beautifully and I recognised many places I lived in 30 years ago in Hackney, then quite a run down part of London and now apparently hipster central.

It is a very 21st century novel and yet I recognised the preoccupations of the 1970s/80s here too. But perhaps I didn't enjoy it as much as a reader who shares the youth of the main characters.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.

Highly enjoyable story of an interconnected group of characters and told from multiple viewpoints over a short span of time - I really enjoyed it. Highly recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Couldn't have loved this book more - a perfect read during a hot London summer. McKenna's characters are so well drawn, you'll be bereft when you've finished and realize they are not real...

At first, I was really immersed in this book and enjoying the queer rep, commentary on late stage capitalism, and nods to climate breakdown. But, as we kept going, the characters were starting to grate on me and, by the time I finished, I was glad to close the book.

I really liked the writing style and look forward to seeing how McKenna develops as an author in future novels. Some of the commentary on how capitalism is destroying everything (including the characters’ beloved London) was difficult to watch but cutting and timely.

Despite being the same age, I couldn’t relate to the humans in this book at all. It was like looking at some weird parallel world that runs alongside mine where people bounce between completely uncommunicative to compulsive honesty without caring a whit about the harm they cause. Everyone in the book is pretty self-absorbed and I just find it so sad when people cling to relationships that have long turned septic because of, idk, sunken costs fallacy? nostalgia? Even if I found the characters largely unlikeable, there’s no denying that they were real and human.

Of all the arcs and themes, I found Rosaleen’s most compelling: an expat who’s grappling with her own sexuality, experienced horrendous religious trauma (that passes down to her sons) and is staring down a terrifying cancer diagnosis…. Well, that’s a lot. My heart broke for her and I saw a lot of growth in her character as the book progressed.

I didn’t enjoy being trapped in a London heatwave. The attitudes and behaviour that our characters are noticing were a stark reminder of why I left London and didn’t look back. People are culty and weird about it, yet London exudes such desperation and unhappiness. There was an undercurrent of English and coloionalist apologist rhetoric that, as an immigrant from a colonialized country, who has been on the sharp end of English racism, I take massive umbrage with. Yes, it's exhausting; yes, it's dehumanizing but English people don’t get a free pass for being ignorant of countries that aren’t England and refuse to educate themselves on the global, generational harm their country has caused. Yeesh.

There’s a lot of sex in this book including an upsetting, graphic rape scene.

All in all, while I wouldn’t call this a pleasant reading experience, I’m glad I read this. I would consider picking up future works by McKenna.

I was privileged to have my request to read this book accepted through NetGalley. Thanks a bunch, Fourth Estate!