Love After Love was such a beautiful book to read. It was full , rich with good vibes. It flowed so well I didn’t want it to end.

Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud is a novel about both familial and platonic love, set in Trinidad.

Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud is set on Trinidad and New York.  We follow Betty, her son Solo, and Mr Chetan, who is their lodger.  

The three of them make a family unit, except Betty and Mr Chetan aren't together. This all works until secrets start to come out.

This is written in the way that they speak in Trinidad (as the author was born there, I'll believe that), so there are words that I've never come across before, but it does work at transporting you to somewhere completely different.  

I enjoyed this book, but I did find that it took a while to read.  The characters are believable and the setting is well written, with descriptions of food that all sound delicious!

Trigger Warning - this book deals with domestic abuse, homophobia, self harm (cutting), and suicide.

Love After Love was published on 2nd April 2020, and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and Bookshop.org.

You can follow Ingrid Persaud on Twitter.

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to Faber and Faber.

This was a beautiful book featuring flawed lifelike characters, romantic nuanced writing, and a rich setting.
Focusing on love in its many forms I found it heartwarming, heartwrenching, realistic, and humorous in parts.

Obviously, I cannot comment on the Caribean representation but I did enjoy reading about the setting and it was a wonderful change to the usual US and UK-based literature.

Recommended.
Set in Trinidad, the story is told by a mother, son, and their lodger, a teacher. The teacher is hiding that he is gay, after being made to leave home when he came out as a teenager. The mother is recovering after years of domestic violence. And the son has an idyllic, protected childhood, until he learns a secret about his father's death, and decides to leave home for New York.

This isn't a tourist advert for Trinidad, but at the same time it did feel like travelling somewhere 'by book'. There's mouthwatering descriptions of food, and whilst I won't be 'liming' (I think "partying"?) anytime soon, the descriptions of just going and sitting on a beach (rain outside right now) and then heading into the water made me want to jump on a plane. Alongside that is violence, homophobia, narrow 'religious' attitudes to women's lives and poverty, but because of the way Persaud writes, there is a sense of how people live day to day rather than 'exotic' others.
TWs
One of the other LT reviews credits Persaud with referencing Derek Walcott (who I've not read) - thanks to them.

"The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome" (

Unfortunately I struggled with this book - it may have been the way it was written but it just was not for me. May be one that other readers enjoy.

I received an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to NetGalley, Faber & Faber, and the author Ingrid Persaud.
Unfortunately the verdict I give this book is only 'ok'. I enjoyed reading it, but wasn't at all gripped.
Its saving grace is the insight into Trinidadian life, both at home and in the United States, and there were some loving moments involving family, friends, and food.
Otherwise, not really enough going on for me to give it more than 3 stars.

I really struggled with the way that this was written, I just couldn’t get into it at all. It’s not my usual type of book. Unfortunately, I gave up as it wasn't for me.

Thank you NetGalley for my complimentary copy in return for my honest review.

An interesting book that's well written. It was very thought-provoking and impactful. I enjoyed my time.

Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

I really enjoyed this book . Only fault the middle dragged on a tad too long . Loved Betty , Mr. Chetan and could relate to Solo’s anguish but felt he was a little too harsh on his mother . The other characters were interesting and added to the story . The dialect , the culture and food of Trinidad was an education lesson for me . This book dealt with so many topics : abuse , gays, self cutting , isolation, friendships, religion, hatred , forgiveness and love . An unique read .

I was quite shocked to read there was still so much prejudice against gays in Trinidad. The story is told with the cadence of speech and dialect words of the island, which add to its charm. The characters are well-drawn; Solo, Mr Chetan, Betty and Uncle Hari are all memorable. Betty has had an abusive husband and her choice of men continues to be unfortunate. Her son has not forgiven her for her part in the death of his father Sunil. Mr Chetan is a kind gentle man who shows love to Betty and Solo. I enjoyed the book although the issues are not relevant to this country at this this time.

My very first experience of reading a Trinidadian author. The language took me by surprise, it took a bit of getting used to it, but afterwords the book flowed beautifully. A modern take on a classical theme: love in all its form: family love, mother and child, romantic love and so on.
Believable and complex characters. The author doesn't shy away from presenting their shortcomings or even their illegal actions. But that only serves to make them even more real, endearing them to us. I particularly liked Betty. She made me laugh so much, even in the sad moments!
I was also very interested in the background story of Trinidad: its customs and beliefs, every day life, corruption and crime. Really enjoyed learning about a country that's pretty much an unknown to me.

An interesting and thought provoking memorable read. I loved the writing style and would definitely recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley for my copy.

Soulful, dark, spellbinding and beautiful, Love After Love is a gut-wrenching, moving book about three characters, Betty, her son Solo, and Mr Chetan, their lodger, and the makeshift family they make together in Trinidad.

Persaud writes marvellously, and her descriptive work is first rate, as is her humour, her dialogue, her plot, the way the characters change over time and over what we learn about their secrets, their histories, their pasts, the things they choose to tell each other and what they do not.

Persaud absolutely excels at voice - the three narrators are executed perfectly, and entirely avoids the problem of waiting for a favourite character's chapter to turn up again.

This is a novel of darkness, of shadows, of brutality and hatred and loss and poverty and shocking sexual violence, but also of life, the lives we make for and with each other, of families, both real and invented, of laughter and colour and poetry and spirit. A gorgeous read.

Written in Trinidadian dialect, this novel explores the hidden underside of this island paradise. The culture is very male-centred, turns a blind eye to abuse and is incredibly homophobic.

For me, it was a slow start, but that was maybe getting used to the dialect as, by the end, I didn't even notice it.

Mr Chetan moves in as a lodger with Betty and her son Solo and the novel explores many different facets of love over a timeframe of many years.

All of the main characters were sympathetically drawn and you could relate to all of them, even when they were making bad decisions.

I liked how the timeframe sometimes jumped by months or even years and how seemingly small events could have repercussions across the years.

Once I read past the first few chapters I didn'want to put the book down and I found it very emotional at the end.

Ingrid Persaud's insightful, multilayered, and heartbreaking novel about family incisively depicts the chaotic nature of love in it's myriad of forms, the price it exacts, the pain, within families, a mother's all encompassing love for her son, the love of friends but does not dwell on the rose coloured romantic love. In a immersive story set in Trinidad, a Caribbean island paradise, a veritable Garden of Eden of beauty, but blighted with its darkness, harbouring its own serpents that lurk below the surface amidst the lush growth, vibrancy, colour, joy, glorious food and music that comprise Trinidadian life. These serpents include abusive men, gossip and judgementalism, a lack of tolerance in letting people live as they wish to, and condemning those who are gay.

Betty Ramdin is married to the abusive Sunil with all the terrors that go with it, she tries her best to handle the dreadful circumstances and endeavouring to shield the worst aspects of it from her young son, Solo, who means everything to her as she tries to protect him from his father. When Sunil dies in an accident, Betty is left a widow, bringing in her work colleague, the kind and compassionate Mr Chetan as their lodger. However, the pernicious and malign influence of Sunil refuses to die with him, with repercussions that are set to continue through the years. Betty, Mr Chetan and Solo go on to gel into a unconventional and supportive family, with Mr Chetan taking on the father role for Solo, providing a significantly more positive role model than his actual father. However, after secrets get spilled, a despairing Solo leaves Trinidad, running to his Uncle Hari and the loneliness and struggles of New York City.

A desperate and devastated Betty avidly seeks news of her beloved Solo, resentful of his relationship with his uncle, but Solo is unforgiving, cannot appreciate his mother, unable to see the truth of her love, he has much to learn of life and his past. Persaud writes in island dialect, of dysfunctional families, motherhood, abuse, grief, problems and trauma that come if you are gay, the battle to survive, the strength of friendships, the paths that life can take, decisions made and the consequences that follow. This is emotionally powerful storytelling, harrowing and brutal, of the toll that love can take which I recommend to others. Many thanks to Faber and Faber for an ARC.

Reading Love after Love by Ingrid Persaud is an immersive experience, one which drew me in until I was thinking about the characters all day long. As the title suggests, this is a novel about love - but not simply in the conventional, romantic sense. This novel explores close friendship where romantic love hasn’t worked out; a mother’s love for an angry, disillusioned and traumatised son; it takes us into the damaging black and white thinking of a son who refuses to love, unable to forgive his mother for a terrible act: it explores gay love in a Trinidadian context where being open about homosexuality can lead to violence and even death. The three central characters - Betty, Mr Chetan and Solo are very real, flawed people who I cared about more and more as the novel went on. Ingrid Persaud has a real talent for storytelling and the serious themes of the book are tempered by fantastic dialogue and humour which makes this novel a really enjoyable read.

An interesting book on many levels as that title is both confusing and very very clear at the same time. This is not a book about love in the romantic sense but is one about love, hate, friendship and everything in between.

A woman in Trinidad lives with her husband and son. She is abused in the marriage and so often finds herself having to cover things up and make things nice for her son to hide the truth from him. When her husband dies, she starts getting out more and meets a certain Mr Chetan who will change her life, in ways neither of them expected.

This is a character based novel rather than one to highlight the culture of Trinidad but the language of the novel itself does that. The nuances of the dialect, the culture of not being able to leave a marriage, fear of being judged however, come through loud and clear.

Both Betty and Mr Chetan are very complex and interesting characters. They are affected by birth, life experiences and also caught up in the decisions that other people make. We all are to some extent, but this one is unique in the way that two such very different characters seem to share more than they realise.

When the story moves to New York, none of the Trinidadian flavour is lost. It’s enhanced somehow as if taking the people out of their natural habitat makes them seem closer to their roots. The son finds out secrets and flees to the big city. Both Mr. Chetan and Betty have shameful secrets, criminal even. There are different rules it would seem in Trinidad about love and being who you are and this will provide interesting topics for book clubs!

Written in Trinidadian dialect it may take some readers time to get into the flow, but I feel it lends a more authentic flavor to the story; a powerful novel, definitely worth the read