Bernardine Evaristo's tale of family ties and illicit love fizzes with subversion
This riproaring, full-bodied riff on sex, secrecy and family is Bernardine Evaristo's seventh book. If you don't yet know her work, you should – she says things about modern Britain that no one else does.
Barrington Jedidiah Walker Esq is a self-educated, sometimes self-deceiving dandy of 74. He is, however, truly in love – not with his wife of 50 years, Carmel, but with his gay lover, Morris Courtney de la Roux. Their first tryst was a lifetime ago when they were both boys in Antigua, and their love affair has swung on through the decades of their adult life in London. Mr Loverman is the story of their switchback ride towards full disclosure.
Evaristo's books have crisscrossed the literary, geographical and historical map. Beginning as the poet of Lara, a fictionalised memoir about life with a Nigerian father and white mother, she has moved from The Emperor's Babe, a verse novel about a love affair two millennia ago between a young female poet and a Roman emperor, through Soul Tourist, a contemporary road-movie set in Europe, to Blonde Roots, a picaresque dystopia which reimagines slavery with white slaves and black masters. The constants in her work – wit, inventiveness, a love of reversals, narrative drive and a magnetic attraction to poetry – are all in sparkling evidence in Mr Loverman.
Barrington, or Barry, is a character bursting with vim. An intelligent man of wide but patchy reading, who coins phrases with the compulsive generosity of quantitative easing, Barrington fools his wife Carmel that he has a low sex drive while conducting an energetic sex life with Morris (and a few others on the side). Morris, a sweet-natured, tender and clear-eyed foil to rumbustious Barrington, has long wanted his lover to live with him, but the latter's family and the vociferously godfearing sisterhood of Carmel's friends stand between the two old men and bliss.
When Carmel is telling the tale, Evaristo uses the lyrical poetic voice that is her most powerful and instinctive asset. Carmel was once a beauty whose turns on the dancefloor with Barrington made them the island's golden couple. In a lacework of phrases that catch the rhythm of memory, daydream and erotic longing, she remembers her early love for Barrington, the long years of frustrated desire, the upward road to education and self-fulfilment in Britain and the simultaneous decline of her marriage. Her female friends, whom we first meet as comic harridans, are revealed to have loved, suffered and supported each other through illness and helped raise each other's children; we learn that Barrington nursed Carmel through two long postnatal depressions.
Various levels of subversion add fizz to the tale. Most obviously, this novel about an older generation of gay black Britons breaks new ground because, for legal and historical reasons, it has been harder for Caribbean men to come out – gay sex is still illegal in Antigua and Jamaica, and that attitude lingers in the diaspora. Secondly, Evaristo herself is not Caribbean but British-Nigerian, of a different gender, generation and provenance from the voice she inhabits.
Lastly, this bold, assured novel briskly disposes of ideas about victimhood. Barrington and Morris, though "on the down-lo" or in the closet, have a lot of sex and a lot of fun. Barrington has made good money out of property, and younger black Britons are carving out careers in art and fashion where once only white "trust-fund babes" prospered. Barrington's brilliant grandson Daniel soars over the dreaming spires of Oxford with a full scholarship to Harvard.
In its sheer attack, though not its conclusions, Mr Loverman reminded me of the broad-brush, vigorous satire of Sam Selvon's late work; a lot gets said, fast. But Evaristo's canvas is also full of different kinds of love and pain, between men and men, women and women, children, parents and grandparents. The ending of Barrington and Morris's tale offers a rounded 19th-century satisfaction. She has given her characters room to change, and her readers time to move from laughter to sympathy. "I still feeling it," says Barry. "And I sorry, Carmel, I sorry."
• Maggie Gee's My Animal Life is published by Telegram. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.
This riproaring, full-bodied riff on sex, secrecy and family is Bernardine Evaristo's seventh book. If you don't yet know her work, you should – she says things about modern Britain that no one else does.
Barrington Jedidiah Walker Esq is a self-educated, sometimes self-deceiving dandy of 74. He is, however, truly in love – not with his wife of 50 years, Carmel, but with his gay lover, Morris Courtney de la Roux. Their first tryst was a lifetime ago when they were both boys in Antigua, and their love affair has swung on through the decades of their adult life in London. Mr Loverman is the story of their switchback ride towards full disclosure.
Evaristo's books have crisscrossed the literary, geographical and historical map. Beginning as the poet of Lara, a fictionalised memoir about life with a Nigerian father and white mother, she has moved from The Emperor's Babe, a verse novel about a love affair two millennia ago between a young female poet and a Roman emperor, through Soul Tourist, a contemporary road-movie set in Europe, to Blonde Roots, a picaresque dystopia which reimagines slavery with white slaves and black masters. The constants in her work – wit, inventiveness, a love of reversals, narrative drive and a magnetic attraction to poetry – are all in sparkling evidence in Mr Loverman.
Barrington, or Barry, is a character bursting with vim. An intelligent man of wide but patchy reading, who coins phrases with the compulsive generosity of quantitative easing, Barrington fools his wife Carmel that he has a low sex drive while conducting an energetic sex life with Morris (and a few others on the side). Morris, a sweet-natured, tender and clear-eyed foil to rumbustious Barrington, has long wanted his lover to live with him, but the latter's family and the vociferously godfearing sisterhood of Carmel's friends stand between the two old men and bliss.
When Carmel is telling the tale, Evaristo uses the lyrical poetic voice that is her most powerful and instinctive asset. Carmel was once a beauty whose turns on the dancefloor with Barrington made them the island's golden couple. In a lacework of phrases that catch the rhythm of memory, daydream and erotic longing, she remembers her early love for Barrington, the long years of frustrated desire, the upward road to education and self-fulfilment in Britain and the simultaneous decline of her marriage. Her female friends, whom we first meet as comic harridans, are revealed to have loved, suffered and supported each other through illness and helped raise each other's children; we learn that Barrington nursed Carmel through two long postnatal depressions.
Various levels of subversion add fizz to the tale. Most obviously, this novel about an older generation of gay black Britons breaks new ground because, for legal and historical reasons, it has been harder for Caribbean men to come out – gay sex is still illegal in Antigua and Jamaica, and that attitude lingers in the diaspora. Secondly, Evaristo herself is not Caribbean but British-Nigerian, of a different gender, generation and provenance from the voice she inhabits.
Lastly, this bold, assured novel briskly disposes of ideas about victimhood. Barrington and Morris, though "on the down-lo" or in the closet, have a lot of sex and a lot of fun. Barrington has made good money out of property, and younger black Britons are carving out careers in art and fashion where once only white "trust-fund babes" prospered. Barrington's brilliant grandson Daniel soars over the dreaming spires of Oxford with a full scholarship to Harvard.
In its sheer attack, though not its conclusions, Mr Loverman reminded me of the broad-brush, vigorous satire of Sam Selvon's late work; a lot gets said, fast. But Evaristo's canvas is also full of different kinds of love and pain, between men and men, women and women, children, parents and grandparents. The ending of Barrington and Morris's tale offers a rounded 19th-century satisfaction. She has given her characters room to change, and her readers time to move from laughter to sympathy. "I still feeling it," says Barry. "And I sorry, Carmel, I sorry."
• Maggie Gee's My Animal Life is published by Telegram. Reported by guardian.co.uk 10 hours ago.