Bernadine Evaristo (2013) Mr Loverman. London, Hamish Hamilton. 978-0-241-14578-4

 

This book is about a loveable rogue, Barrington Walker. One of the Windrush generation having moved to London from Antigua in the 1950’s. The book is about prejudice and the consequences of fear.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

[Spoiler alert]

Barrington Walker is in his 70’s and has done well through business, although unwilling to identify quite how well, he supports many of his extended family, both in the UK and back in Antigua. He is married with two daughters but has been in an intimate relationship with his childhood friend, Morris, since they were teenagers.

Most of the book is about his coming out – to family and friends – and the fear and prejudice surrounding it. It does however, talk about domestic abuse in the generation above Barry. His wife’s father was physically abusive to her mother, but her mother was unwilling to leave, feeling it was something she had to “put up with”. His own grandmother was physically abused by her second husband and, again, at the time it was felt that women should accept that was how it was. This reflects Barry’s feelings about hiding his homosexuality, his relationship with Morris and his experiences cruising.

In one scene, Barry’s wife, Carmel, slaps him across the face, and there is a suggestion that this isn’t the first time this has happened. He also seems to accept this as his due.

Hanya Yanagihara (2015) A Little Life. London, Picador. 978-1-5290-6124-6

 

This is an epic, magnificent book focusing on the lives of four male friends who meet when they are in college and continue their friendships through the ups and downs of work, art and the relationships between themselves and people who join and leave their circle. It starts with them in their late teens and continues through to late middle-age.
 
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
[Spoiler alert]
 
The domestic abuse in this book occupies a relatively small part of what is a huge book, and is somewhat overshadowed by the self-harm and abuse the main character suffers, but it is significant in it’s brevity but intensity.
 
Jude forms his very first consensual relationship with an artist, Caleb. The relationship very soon becomes both physically abusive and mentally abusive as Caleb humiliates Jude at every opportunity. Finally he rapes him and throws him downstairs, leaving him for dead.
 
Despite the abuse being a discrete part of the book, it is difficult to separate from the main story as tolerating the abuse for as long as he does, illustrates how abuse has characterised Jude’s life and how poor his self-esteem, despite his outward and worldly achievements.
 
Awards:
 
·        Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2015
·        Finalist National Book Award for Fiction 2015
·        Winner of Kirkus Prize for Fiction 2015
·        Shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction 2016
·        Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2016
·        Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2017

Carmen Maria Machado (2020) In The Dream House. London, Serpent’s Tail. 978-1-7881-6224-1

 

This book is a personal memoir, reflecting on an abusive lesbian relationship framed in different narrative lenses. The relationship is detailed from the first meeting, through the abuse and after the writer had left.

[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]

The story is told partly in the second person and partly in first person. It provides a really intimate portrait of the abuse told through many different narratives – some less than a page long – but each developing the story. It details coercive control in its clearest form – gaslighting, anger at saying or doing the wrong thing, being with the wrong people, it being the wrong time.

This is the first book I’ve read where the experience of the writer resonates with my own experience of an abusive relationship, despite my relationship being a heterosexual marriage and this being a lesbian relationship. All the other books have also been heterosexual relationships but nothing else has come close to my own experience.

Awards:

• Winner of the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction
• Winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
• Finalist for the Stonewall Book Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award
• Finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing
• Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

Best Book of the Year

• The New Yorker
• TIME Magazine
• Vogue
• Entertainment Weekly
• Harper’s Bazaar
• Paris Review

Best Memoir of the Decade

• LitHub
• Paste
• Autostraddle