Mr Loverman

Bernardine Evaristo’s Inside Story: “This book took just over two years, which is very quick for me. I had a lot of fun with my Mr Loverman. He came to me almost fully-formed.

“In 2011, I was part of a mentoring group for the Arvon Foundation, who put on literary events and workshops around the country. I found myself in the position of being in a workshop situation. Now, I’m never in a workshop situation. I didn’t study creative writing and I’m usually the person who teaches. I’m never there as a student. But here, the mentors could take part in each other’s classes. I thought it would be fun and attended the playwright Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s workshop.

“She had a load of old passport photos on a table from the 1950s and 1960s. God knows where she got them from. She sat them on a table and asked us to each pick one up. I picked one photo, which I didn’t like, so found a new one. It was of an older black man wearing a trench coat and a trilby. He looked Caribbean. Rebecca then said she wanted us to imagine our character standing in front of a mirror taking their clothes off. We were to write that they’re seeing, and thinking in the first person. That was how Barrington Walker emerged. He also emerged as gay in that short exercise, which took about 15 minutes.

“I wrote a couple of pages and read them aloud to the group. I thought it was incredibly interesting and they really liked it. I returned home from the course and had to contend with a novel I had been working on for three years that just wasn’t working. It was dead. But I had loved writing this story about this man from the workshop and couldn’t stop thinking about him. So I wrote a bit more, and a bit more. After a few days I knew it was the novel. I dropped the original novel and pursued Barrington.
“I thought it was a good idea because we don’t see gay representation in Caribbean fiction. Or any fiction, really. He emerged as Caribbean so I went with it as it felt like a powerful thing to be doing.

“His wife, Carmel, was initially seen only through his eyes in the novel. So it was all Barrington’s story. When I eventually sent it to my publishers, they gave me great feedback. They said they loved it, but didn’t feel I was doing her justice. I thought about it and concluded that Barrington was never going to present her in a fair way because their relationship is so toxic. So I came up with the idea of giving Carmel her own sections. When I look at the book now, I know she is so important to that story and a lot of people love her sections. I realise how important it was that my editors gave me that feedback. I’ve always been really good with feedback. I just think, ‘What is the point of not taking on board constructive, informal feedback?’ Because I’m never just writing for myself.”