I was so grateful this was a buddy read for me, and I can not recommend this book enough to book clubs everywhere. She doesn't preach it she lives it.īarry shows us the best aspect of practicing “live and let live.” He does wrong by Carmel, but, if he hadn't made this major error, his life would have been an example of what you can accomplish if you live by your own moral code and intuition and do right by others.īoth Carmel and Barry are victims here, and they are both good people, too. Her Christianity is what keeps her sane, restores her, offers her salvation. Evaristo does here is so very clever: she juxtaposes a religiously devout wife, Carmel, with a gay, atheist husband, Barry, to show that.Įach of us should be on our own paths, allowed to do what we want to do, as long as we aren't victimizing others.Ĭarmel shows us the best aspect of practicing religion. James Baldwin, Esq., The way to be really despicable is to be contemptuous of other people's pain. He did not, however, need to marry a beautiful young woman who was so in love with him (oh, Barry, you fucker). He couldn't marry his true love, Morris (though he cheats on him, too), buy a house with him, and still be a respected business owner within the community. Evaristo shows us that Barry, in Antigua, in the late 1950s had no “choice” to be gay.

The restrictions we have placed on each other have resulted in a misery that is eating us whole. Which adults are living in sin and which ones aren't. We keep thinking we are judge and jury and WE decide which consenting adults get to be with each other and which ones don't. Carmel and Barry's unhappy marriage is the result of what's so ridiculously wrong with our world. I hold him 100% responsible for what he did to his wife, Carmel, but Bernardine Evaristo is far too clever of a writer to make this story one-dimensional. Laughed at his jokes, too.ĭon't get me wrong for me, Barry remained a selfish bastard to the very last page. I wanted to throttle Barry, rip up his immaculate suits, and smack him upside the head.īut, since the story is told mostly from Barry's perspective, I got inside his mind, and I understood him a little.

He hasn't spent too much time thinking about his wife, back at home, withering like a houseplant that's been kept in the shadows, never watered or fed. Barry's a self-centered son-of-a-bitch who likes his routines, his wealth, his custom-made suits and his sex life with men. This is a heart-breaking story, or, it would have been completely heart-breaking if it hadn't also been hilariously funny in parts. and Barry's gay and his wife doesn't know it, and she's spent 50 years loving him and trying to get him to love her back. For Barry and Carmel Walker it's a little bit of “all of the above.”

Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo