Prejudice and revelations in “Love After Love”

Love After Love. By Ingrid Persaud. One World; 336 pages; $27. Faber & Faber; £14.99.

INGRID PERSAUD’S engaging and vibrant novel begins in violence. In a story set in the author’s native Trinidad, Betty, her son Solo and Mr Chetan all encounter the dark side of that island’s culture. Betty’s vicious husband, Sunil, assaults her. “My arm was in a cast when we buried Sunil a week later,” she recalls. Mr Chetan’s landlord is the victim of a brutal robbery, and he must find somewhere else to live. He ends up lodging with the widowed Betty and Solo, and the trio create an unlikely yet happy family. But nothing is as simple as it seems.

Ms Persaud trained as a lawyer; she has won prizes for her short stories, but “Love After Love” is her first novel. It is narrated in the lively voices of her three main characters, braiding their stories and perspectives together and revealing their secrets to the reader.

For this is a book of revelations. It is easy to guess the truth Betty elides at the beginning of the story: her husband’s death was not accidental. As for Mr Chetan: he and Betty hit it off, and she hopes their relationship will go further. Perhaps he does, too. But in a scene both hilarious and moving, the author depicts in graphic detail Betty’s inability to wake his “sleeping soldier”.

Finally, he confesses to her what the reader has already learned: Mr Chetan is gay. The repercussions of this admission, and of Solo’s accidental discovery of the cause of his father’s death, shape the story, as these warm and loving characters struggle to come to terms with their own feelings, and the feelings—and deeds—of others.

These personal traumas are also political. Ms Persaud confronts the homophobia at large in Trinidad (where homosexuality was only decriminalised in 2018), of which Mr Chetan has been a victim all his life. For his part, Solo ends up travelling to America to stay with an uncle in New York. There he must navigate a hostile and frightening immigration system while struggling with his burdensome inheritance.

Amid all the sorrow, though, Ms Persaud’s novel is a delight. It is written in a lilting patois that sings from the page, and it is full of warmth and beauty. Mr Chetan—as good as a father to Solo—wants the best for the boy: “He mustn’t go through life being ’fraidy ’fraidy.” Mr Chetan has learned that himself the hard way; it is a lesson for the reader, too.