The Booker Review

“In the darkness, the fallen coconuts all around us glimmered like skulls.”

A girl is smuggled across the water from Trinidad to Venezuela, in the bottom of a boat, in the middle of the night. Why? And who is she?

Thus opens Love Forms, full of promise. Then, the story quickly becomes… surprisingly uneventful? The narrative reads like a memoir, plodding along in a pedestrian way through the protagonist’s mundane family life; all description no dialogue. I will admit to finding the scenery a bit difficult to wade through at times.

We meet Dawn, a 58-year old white Trinidadian woman now living in the UK: divorced, two grown-up sons. As we unwrap the layers of story that brought her here, we come to understand that she herself is trying to piece together what has happened to her, as she searches for a daughter whom she was made to adopt out as a teenager.

Central to the tale is the theme of motherly relationships. Through Dawn’s eyes, we see her pursuit of the long-lost daughter set against present-day interactions with her sons, and her relationship with her own mother. I am struck by a feeling of terrible isolation as Dawn tries to navigate this search – it’s not that it’s a secret, per se, it’s just that no one will talk about it with her. Father, mother, estranged husband, brothers, son: all want to pretend it didn’t happen.

I found the relationship between Dawn and her mother particularly interesting, how it develops. Things seeming one way and being another. Her mother driving solutions when clearly Dawn just wants sympathy, wants permission to be struggling – with work, kids, living far from home. Her husband’s unsupportiveness and father’s complete lack of empathy for her situation (“Well, if you want to work, then work!”) are painful to watch at times, and she doesn’t appear to have any real friends. Loneliness skulks in the bushes, never quite mentioned, but palpable all the same.

In the margins of the story, we get to take a tour of a 1980s Trinidadian upbringing; the trees laden with fruit, the sounds of carnival ringing into the night. This was probably my favourite aspect of the book, getting to learn some of the history and culture of this unfamiliar corner of the world. (Did you know that Trinidad experienced a coup in the 90s? I didn’t!)

The central riddle of the story (where is this daughter?) persists on and on. And yet, the strength of Dawn’s longing for the daughter seems to subside a little as she finally feels the warmth of her family huddling around to support her in her Sisyphean quest. Perhaps that is what she was really searching for all this time.