Overcoming heartbreak to find happiness

By Philippa Tracy

Love After Love is also the title of a poem by Nobel Prize-winning writer Derek Walcott. It is a poem about recovering from heartbreak and finding happiness again. The break-up in the novel is of a non-traditional family unit, in which a widow, her son and a gay man build a home together and then struggle to come to terms with secrets that destroy their happiness. There is a connection in the way both the poem and the novel explore love. Both writers were also born in the Caribbean; the novel is set in Trinidad and Tobago, where Persaud was born.

The gentle Mr Chetan comes to live with Betty Ramdin and her son, Solo, after the death of her abusive husband. At the start of the novel, Betty describes, “Mr Chetan and Solo – happy as pappy and I’m like a Wednesday in the middle.” That all changes one night when dark secrets are revealed after too much to drink. Solo overhears and responds with anger and resentment towards his mother. He gets as far away as possible, as soon as he can. He moves to New York for many years, where he suffers at the hands of con artists, but also from self-harm. He only returns home, late in the novel, after a tragic death.

The story jumps backwards and forwards in time, to reveal the different perspectives on the story, as the three main characters take turns narrating it. There is a lot of sadness in the novel. There is also some humour too, including in a scene where Betty attempts to have sex with Mr Chetan, before she knows he is gay. Eventually, he acknowledges that, “Miss B and I needed to be free to meet other people otherwise it was like we were in a sexless marriage.” When Mr Chetan moves out, they remain friends and Mr Chetan remains in touch with Solo, even as he refuses to speak to his mother.

Betty’s voice is strong and amusing, relatable at times and yet also a contradiction in places. She understands that grown men “can sometimes be such children.” And she is shocked at how some women accept a “good lash” from their husbands. But she also says of a woman whose husband she is involved with, “if she won’t look after her husband then she should expect somebody else will do the looking after for she.” At one point, she describes another suitor as “dull like a washing machine manual.” For such a strong and opinionated woman, it is disappointing how she accepts the estrangement from her son, almost stoically, for so many years.

At times, the use of Trinidadian dialect can make the dialogue hard to follow. Although it adds rhythm and pace to the prose, it takes a while to get used to phrases like, “fix up a lime with Miss B”. Once it is repeated enough, you understand he’s talking about hanging out. Often, though, the dialogue reveals universally relatable sentiments. Mr Chetan, when comforting Betty, as her son refuses to soften, wisely tells the reader, “Is true that child will eat mother but mother don’t eat child.” It breaks his heart to see her like that and the reader’s too.

The novel explores attitudes to marriage, to women and to homosexuality through an unconventional family unit. Walcott’s poem is ultimately about learning to love yourself. This novel is an exploration of different types of love, and ultimately about forgiveness. Having won the Costa First Novel Award in 2020, it was a good choice for my book club recently and inspired lots of discussion. It is engaging and very moving in places.