He’s made a whole show of tiptoe-ing, skulking, squeezing and hushing himself into his house. In ‘Art of a Marriage’, the opening chapter, Barrington sneaks into his wife’s bed at dawn following an evening out with Morris. To top it off, he is a tad unreliable, especially when it comes to the telling of Carmel. It’s ridiculous how rich, how complete Barrington is on the pages of Mr. He is fully aware of what this double-life, this half-life has cost him. He’s trying to shed the shame of being in the closet for most of his life. He is a pillar of the Caribbean community.īut he’s conflicted and scared.

Barrington is an affectionate, generous father and grandfather. He has pizzazz (I’d have to dress up to have tea with Barrington!). He holds forth on a variety of issues – including race, gentrification, business, parenting, progress, and immigration. Loverman is the first of her eight books that I’ve read? Mehn!īarrington Jedidiah Walker is witty, hilarious and erudite (I had to read this in the solitude of my bedroom because his quips and bon mots had me hollering). The story to portray this life should be character-driven and how good the story is will depend on the scope, richness and complexity of the character.īernardine Evaristo is up to this task. Fifty years to immigrate to London in his twenties and navigate England as an Antiguan man to build a life with Carmel and their two children to maintain a life-sustaining tryst to suffer fear and shame fifty years of starts and stops. Loverman has been with his lover Morris for as long as he’s been married to his wife Carmel. It’s May 2010 and 74-year-old Barrington Jedidiah Walker is contemplating leaving his fifty-year marriage to live fully and openly as a gay man. I want to spend my remaining years with Morris”

“I decided as soon as I got up that there comes a time when the botheration and fabrication is too much, even for a man of my considerable fortitude.

Loverman book