Love After Love

Starred review from January 27, 2020
Persaud’s auspicious debut traces the gut-wrenching lives of a makeshift Trinidadian family over the past two decades. After Betty Ramdin’s abusive, alcoholic husband, Sunil, dies, Betty invites a reserved math teacher, Mr. Chetan, to rent a room in her house. Chetan, who knows Betty as an administrator at his school, accepts the offer and forms a bond with Betty’s five-year-old son, Solo. The three quickly form a de facto family, and Chetan shines in the kitchen (“She hand nowhere near sweet like mine,” he says). Cracks emerge later, as Betty’s attempt to initiate sex with Chetan falters when he reveals he is gay, and Solo, now a teenager, overhears Betty confess to Chetan that she caused Sunil’s death by pushing him down a set of stairs. After Solo graduates high school, he illegally immigrates to New York City and cuts off all contact with his mother. Though Solo’s uncle helps him find work, he isolates himself socially and descends into self-harm. Meanwhile, Chetan, who came of age when sodomy was illegal in Trinidad, navigates clandestine relationships with a controlling police officer and an old flame, now married. After Solo hears tragic news from Trinidad, he returns for a bittersweet reunion. In chapters alternately narrated by Solo, Betty, and Chetan in vibrant Trinidadian dialect, Persaud expertly maps the trio’s emotional development and builds a complicated yet seamless plot full of indelible insights and poignant moments. This affecting family saga shines brightly. Agent: Zoe Waldie, RCW Lit Agency.

February 1, 2020
A found family attempts to mend their individual and shared wounds. This novel by Trinidadian author Persaud (If I Never Went Home, 2013), winner of the 2017 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, explores self-harm, sexuality, trauma, loneliness, and the idea of home. In the opening chapter, Betty, a young mother, is being physically abused by her husband. After his abrupt death pages later, she says: "That man only gave love you could feel. He cuff you down? Honeymoon. He give you a black eye? True love in your tail....He put you in hospital for a week? Love will stay the course. He take the knife and stab your leg? Until death do us part." Years later, Betty invites her colleague Mr. Chetan to live with her and Solo, her adolescent son, as a platonic lodger. As the three of them get to know each other, they create a stable and loving household. After Mr. Chetan shares his deepest secret with Betty, she decides to confess her own--only to realize Solo has overheard the devastating details. The moment upends their family and changes their lives forever. To put space between himself and his mother, Solo embarks on a trip to New York to stay with his paternal uncle. Back in Trinidad, Betty tries to fix the relationship with her son while also finding herself as an individual. Eventually, Mr. Chetan moves out and attempts to live his truth, which puts him in great danger. As the years pass, the three of them grapple with the literal and figurative distance between them. Broken into three parts, the novel oscillates among the three characters' points of view. Writing in vibrant Trinidadian dialect, Persaud renders her characters with great empathy and care. If the novel's structure feels a bit uneven (with the second section dragging a bit), the ending gives readers some much-needed relief. A harrowing domestic drama full of heart.

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Starred review from February 15, 2020
Set in Trinidad, this affecting novel tells the story of an unconventional family: Miss Betty, a widow; her teenage son, Solo; and their lodger, Mr. Chetan, a teacher and closeted gay man. Following a failed sexual encounter with Miss Betty, Mr. Chetan comes out to her, an action that cements a loving friendship. All is well until something unexpected happens, so emotionally powerful it drives Solo away from home to the U.S., where he will live with his uncle, determined never to return to Trinidad. The story, told in alternating chapters from the three characters' respective, first-person points of view, follows the evolving nature of the troubled relationships among them. Self-hating Solo is especially troubled, finding relief only in cutting. Now estranged from her son, Miss Betty finds solace in her continuing friendship with Mr. Chetan, who struggles to find love with other men. Arriving without foreshadowing, a major incident that drives the novel's climax may seem arbitrary to some readers; however, it serves the essential purpose of reuniting mother and son. Beautifully written, the novel is told in Trinidadian dialect ( You here bazodee over a man you ain't seen since he was in short pants ). The skilled treatment of the characters brings them to vivid life, as it does the richly realized Trinidadian setting. An award-winning short story writer, Persaud demonstrates her skill with longer fiction in this superb debut novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)