Bernardine Evaristo's Mr Loverman: 'Brokeback Mountain with ackee and saltfish and old people'
Dawn FrenchBarrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in
Antigua he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant wise-cracking local character
with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare Barrington is a
husband father and grandfather - but he is also secretly homosexual lovers with his great
childhood friend Morris.His deeply religious and disappointed wife Carmel thinks he sleeps
with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown Barrington wants to divorce Carmel
and live with Morris but after a lifetime of fear and deception will he manage to break
away?Mr Loverman is a ground-breaking exploration of Britain's older Caribbean community which
explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear
the consequences of being true to themselves.Praise for Bernardine Evaristo: 'One of Britain's
most innovative authors . . . Bernardine Evaristo always dares to be different' New
Nation'Evaristo remains an undeniably bold and energetic writer whose world view is anything
but one-dimensional' Sunday Times'Audacious genre-bending in-yer-face wit and masterly
retellings of underwritten corners of history are the hallmarks of Evaristo's work' New
Statesman Bernardine Evaristo is the author of seven books including three critically acclaimed
verse novels Lara The Emperor's Babe and Soul Tourists. Mr Loverman is her second prose novel
after 2008's Blonde Roots which was longlisted for the Orange Prize and won the Orange Prize
Youth Panel Award. Evaristo's other awards include the EMMA Best Book Arts Council Award and
the Big Red Read Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was awarded an
MBE in 2009. She lives in London.
