Love After Love

Winner of the 2020 Costa First Novel Award

Paperback

Published Jan. 14, 2021 by Faber & Faber.

ISBN:
978-0-571-35622-5
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4 stars (1 review)

Meet the Ramdin-Chetan family: forged through loneliness, broken by secrets, saved by love.

Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household, happy in their differences, as they build a home together. Home: the place where your navel string is buried, keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world. Happy and loving they are, until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.

Brave and brilliant, steeped in affection, Love After Love asks us to consider what happens at the very brink of human forgiveness, and offers hope to anyone who has loved and lost and has yet to find their way back.

7 editions

An insightful domestic drama

4 stars

Love After Love is an insightful domestic drama set mostly on the island of Trinidad, a beautiful place, but one blighted by poverty, violence and intolerance. At the centre of this novel are Betty and her pre-teen son, Solo, who take in Mr Chetan as their lodger. These three very different characters take it in turns, chapter by chapter, to narrate the story of how their lives come together and then diverge. Their relationship felt authentic and it's not taking the usual path for a fictional novel made Love After Love particularly memorable for me. I loved how Ingrid Persaud gave every character a distinctive voice even down to briefly-met cameo appearances. I could always quickly tell which of our protagonists was speaking through their use of language and the Trini dialect throughout is wonderful. It was easy to understand, and I appreciated the extra depth provided by local idioms …