Top 10 novels about unconventional families | Ingrid Persaud
Posted by The Editor on April 15, 2020 5:30 am
Tags: Barbara Kingsolver, Books, Culture, Fiction, Gabriel García Márquez, Max Porter, Trinidad and Tobago
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Trinidadian novelist Ingrid Persaud chooses books in which people attach themselves to ‘a something’ that might ease their loneliness
My mother said to make sure my belly full. Airplane food don’t carry taste. So before I left Trinidad for university in London, I licked down a plate of curry cascadoux fish with fresh pigeon peas and boiled rice. Ma hand sweet, but I know what she’s doing. They say eat cascadoux and no matter how far you stray, all England, America, Australia, your days will end in Trinidad.
Three decades later I still ain’t reach back for good but my novel, Love After Love, is set there. It follows an unconventional family – Betty, navigating life as a young widow, her teenage son Solo and their lodger Mr Chetan, a gay man unable to claim his sexual identity. Then one night, Bram! Solo overhears a devastating secret and the whole family mash up. Their story shows how love, even in its messiest forms, might still save us.