Mr. Loverman

“Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life.”—Ali Smith

One of Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s most highly celebrated novels, Mr. Loverman follows a man named Barrington Jedidiah Walker, who is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he has lived in Hackney, London, for years. Flamboyant and wise-cracking, with dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father, grandfather―and also secretly gay, lovers with his childhood friend, Morris.

Barry’s deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women rather than men. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barry wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away? With the wit and humanity that characterized Girl, Woman, Other, Mr. Loverman explodes cultural myths and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves.