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| Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo – review | Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo – review |
| (3 days later) | |
| At 74, Barrington "Barry" Walker, a Caribbean transplant to Stoke Newington in London with a church-going wife and two grown-up daughters, is "still spruced up and sharp-suited with a rather manly swagger", still working "a certain je ne sais whatsit." He's also been having a secret affair with another elderly man, Morris de la Roux, since they were both teenagers in Antigua, and coming clean to his family is unthinkable. "Buggerer of men…" he thinks. "How I go live with that?" | At 74, Barrington "Barry" Walker, a Caribbean transplant to Stoke Newington in London with a church-going wife and two grown-up daughters, is "still spruced up and sharp-suited with a rather manly swagger", still working "a certain je ne sais whatsit." He's also been having a secret affair with another elderly man, Morris de la Roux, since they were both teenagers in Antigua, and coming clean to his family is unthinkable. "Buggerer of men…" he thinks. "How I go live with that?" |
| It's a fertile topic, and Evaristo plunges into a debate on everything from race, gender, sexuality and religion to the gentrification of multicultural London neighbourhoods. This works best when the ideas are submerged in action: too often, Evaristo gives her characters sharply inked, directly opposing opinions to bounce back and forth, as with a dinner-table discussion on what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, or an argument about feminism in an adult education class. Blurrier lines would be more interesting. | It's a fertile topic, and Evaristo plunges into a debate on everything from race, gender, sexuality and religion to the gentrification of multicultural London neighbourhoods. This works best when the ideas are submerged in action: too often, Evaristo gives her characters sharply inked, directly opposing opinions to bounce back and forth, as with a dinner-table discussion on what the Bible has to say about homosexuality, or an argument about feminism in an adult education class. Blurrier lines would be more interesting. |
| Evaristo began her career as a poet, and several of her previous novels were written in verse, including The Emperor's Babe, about a black Roman girl in third-century London. It shows: this is her second prose novel, but she continues to play with form, rhythm and double meanings, especially in chapters narrated by Barry, an excitable, self-taught know-it-all. "And so what if me and my people choose to mash up the h-english linguish whenever we feel like it, drop our prepositions with our panties, piss in the pot of correct syntax and spelling, and mangle our grammar at random?" he demands in a soliloquy that doubles as an explanation for Evaristo's style. (There's a lot of italics.) "Is this not our postmodern, post-colonial prerogative?" | Evaristo began her career as a poet, and several of her previous novels were written in verse, including The Emperor's Babe, about a black Roman girl in third-century London. It shows: this is her second prose novel, but she continues to play with form, rhythm and double meanings, especially in chapters narrated by Barry, an excitable, self-taught know-it-all. "And so what if me and my people choose to mash up the h-english linguish whenever we feel like it, drop our prepositions with our panties, piss in the pot of correct syntax and spelling, and mangle our grammar at random?" he demands in a soliloquy that doubles as an explanation for Evaristo's style. (There's a lot of italics.) "Is this not our postmodern, post-colonial prerogative?" |
| Interspersed with Barry's present-day narration are chapters from the point of view of his wife, Carmel, which begin on her lonely wedding night, when she's a clueless teenager marvelling at the "diamante sky, stretching yonder into infinity", while her husband snores. We revisit her at 10-year intervals, through postnatal depression and an affair of her own, to a renewal of her Pentecostal faith. Carmel knows that Barry is straying, just not with whom. She has enough on her plate with a job for Hackney council, two unhappy daughters – Donna, a single mother, and Maxine, a flighty fashion stylist – and a gaggle of gossipy friends from back home. She doesn't share her husband's wordiness, but her sections have a poetry of their own, with inner monologues that turn into prayers and fragments of sentences snaking down the page. When she sleeps with a co-worker, she's overwhelmed with feeling: "You was rapacious, ravishing, ravaged." | Interspersed with Barry's present-day narration are chapters from the point of view of his wife, Carmel, which begin on her lonely wedding night, when she's a clueless teenager marvelling at the "diamante sky, stretching yonder into infinity", while her husband snores. We revisit her at 10-year intervals, through postnatal depression and an affair of her own, to a renewal of her Pentecostal faith. Carmel knows that Barry is straying, just not with whom. She has enough on her plate with a job for Hackney council, two unhappy daughters – Donna, a single mother, and Maxine, a flighty fashion stylist – and a gaggle of gossipy friends from back home. She doesn't share her husband's wordiness, but her sections have a poetry of their own, with inner monologues that turn into prayers and fragments of sentences snaking down the page. When she sleeps with a co-worker, she's overwhelmed with feeling: "You was rapacious, ravishing, ravaged." |
| Barry and Morris's relationship is never as compelling. Yes, they've been together for ever and they have old-fashioned ideas about masculinity, but Morris is underdrawn and dialogue between the two is stilted. Even a moment of boozy clarity, with Barry rhapsodising about the lover he's considering risking everything for, is bland: "He's a good-hearted man, a special man, a sexy man…" | Barry and Morris's relationship is never as compelling. Yes, they've been together for ever and they have old-fashioned ideas about masculinity, but Morris is underdrawn and dialogue between the two is stilted. Even a moment of boozy clarity, with Barry rhapsodising about the lover he's considering risking everything for, is bland: "He's a good-hearted man, a special man, a sexy man…" |
| Whether he'll find the courage to come out is the question that motors the plot along, and Evaristo convincingly gets across the shame and fear he feels as a member of a specific, barely visible group: an ageing, gay Caribbean immigrant. She's clearly in favour of him embracing the messy truth, but the reality she creates on the page ends up being too tidy, with a neat ending and characters like the spoilt, shallow Maxine (who calls her own half-baked couture ideas "pure genius") too often used to score easy points against. | Whether he'll find the courage to come out is the question that motors the plot along, and Evaristo convincingly gets across the shame and fear he feels as a member of a specific, barely visible group: an ageing, gay Caribbean immigrant. She's clearly in favour of him embracing the messy truth, but the reality she creates on the page ends up being too tidy, with a neat ending and characters like the spoilt, shallow Maxine (who calls her own half-baked couture ideas "pure genius") too often used to score easy points against. |
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