Book review: Evenings and Weekends

Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna is a messy and raw depiction of love: platonic, heterosexual, queer, maternal, and the complexity of interconnected relationships, told over one London heatwave.

It’s London, 2019, a sticky heatwave, and a whale is stuck in the Thames River. I think the weather alone gives this book a unique intensity, and as McKenna introduces us to the lives of four interconnected individuals, this tension and emotional complexity grows. The lives of the four individuals, Ed, Maggie, Phil and Rosaleen, allow McKenna to span from internalised homophobia, cancer, heartbreak, pregnancy and family relationship struggle within 350 pages.

McKenna introduces us to a complex ensemble cast of characters, each grappling with their own issues. Maggie is pregnant but unsure if this is really what she wants; to settle down. Ed, Maggie’s boyfriend, is an introspective, emotionally distressed character dealing with a lot of inner-turmoil and a complicated secret. Phil, Maggie’s best friend, is navigating an open relationship and unreciprocated feelings from his housemate. Rosaleen, Phil’s mother, desperately tries to inform him of her devastating cancer diagnosis.

I loved McKenna’s writing style throughout this book; it’s like she sits back and lets her characters make their connections and have their conversations and she’s just the scribe. We almost have the privileged perspective in our ability to peek into the minds of each character and perhaps know more about them than they know about themselves. She also focuses just as much on what the characters do say, as well as what they don’t; Phil understands Maggie’s uncertainty from the moment she reveals her pregnancy. He is not explicit in his response to his mother’s cancer diagnosis; he doesn’t need to tell her he will miss her, this is understood gently between the two of them.

The book is also heavily political, though similar to the underlying emotionally complex themes of this book, its politics is subtly dropped into conversation. McKenna explains that, with the books being set in 2019 “It felt like there was a lot at stake politically in terms of there being this potentially more expansive version of life in the UK being on the table. I was interested in what it feels like in people’s emotional lives when they can kind of look towards the future and see themselves in it.” I have an avid interest in politics myself, and I found it this element cemented the idea that this book is so real, very human and not entirely separate at all from the cosmopolitan lives of Londoners today, despite the political climate being 7 years on.

I also found it interesting that this book was set right before a global pandemic, despite being published in 2024, that would have disrupted each of these characters. The pre-pandemic setting gives the novel a sense of suspended normality, almost nostalgic, while letting it explore modern life without the shadow of what we now know is coming.

This book is intimate, funny, queer, messy, and just very human, and McKenna captures each character’s idiosyncrasies in gentle observations that really do allow the book to unfold in such a short time period. The intensity of the heatwave amplifies both the emotional and physical landscape of the novel, turning ordinary interactions into something more charged and desperate.

Written by, Sophie Robinson