Page Turners – May 2024 review

In May the Page Turners read ‘Mr Loverman‘, however unfortunately quite a few of us were not available on the day of the meeting and had to share our views by email. The book was published in 2013 and is the seventh book from Booker prize-winning Bernadine Evaristo. It explores the story of 74 year old Barry, who was born in Antigua and emigrated to London. He is a husband, father and grandfather but is considering divorcing his wife and spending his last years with his childhood friend Morris, with whom he has been having a secret homosexual relationship for sixty years. We learn about the impact this could have on his family but also hear about how he has kept his secret for so many years and the impact that has had. The book is by turns funny and heart-breaking. We admired the writing which was able to make the most of both these aspects of the story. There was a great cast of characters, beautifully portrayed to good effect.

Most of us enjoyed the story – as always it is good to explore, through literature, a section of society which we know little about and challenge any misconceptions we may have held. Some of us found it uplifting but others felt it lost its way a bit in the middle.

A number of us struggled with the long sections of the book without capital letters and full stops and did not understand the point of this. Some of us also struggled with parts written in dialect. We acknowledge that it is important to know that not everyone speaks as we do and that is part of the characters being portrayed but we found it disrupted the flow of our reading.

Overall we were glad we chose this book and some of us will be looking for others by the same author. We hear the book is being filmed for a BBC series and can imagine it being worth watching.

Do get in touch if you would like to read this book and perhaps one of us can swap our page turner for one of yours.

Deborah Wallis, convenor