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Even by Evaristo’s experimental standards, this book is a highly ambitious mash-up of forms and stories. It takes a mismatched couple, strait-laced Stanley and ebullient Jessie, on a road trip across Europe where they meet the ghosts of black historical figures, from Alexander Pushkin to Mary Seacole. We learn a lot along the way, but the real engine of the story is Stanley and Jessie’s combative relationship. Told in a blend of prose, poetry, scripts, memos, legal documents, budget spreadsheets … and road signs, Soul Tourists ultimately wobbles under the weight of both its own good intentions and its skittish variety, but it has charm and energy to burn.
Sample line “Will you shut the fuck up, Mr Whingealot! This is supposed to be a freewheeling adventure, not an expedition planned with military precision.”
While we await Evaristo’s follow-up to Girl, Woman, Other, this slim memoir fills a gap. It’s a spirited tour through her life, from childhood (she gets her fighting spirit from her father) through her relationships, activism and literary success. The theme is to keep going – with work, with love, with life – and Evaristo is tougher on herself than she is on others, but also understanding and forgiving. She observes that “storytelling [is] my most powerful means of communication”, and although it’s full of interesting details and humour, Manifesto’s piecemeal structure means it lacks the power of her fiction.
Sample line “Boy, do I look fierce. I remember smiling at a baby on a plane once, only for its father to tell me I was scaring it. Thanks.”
5 Lara (1997)
Evaristo’s first novel was autobiographical and written entirely in verse. It’s a tribute to her heritage: her Nigerian father and her English mother’s Irish side, but also family history connected to Germany and Brazil. Lara was a formative text for Evaristo: it helped her find her family and also her own voice. Writing about your parents has its risks, however – Evaristo’s mother complained about the sex scenes between the narrator’s parents. “What do you know?” she asked. Meanwhile, her father proudly showed his daughter’s first novel to everyone and claimed to have read it – but “one of my brothers tested him on it”, wrote Evaristo, “and he failed every question”.
Sample line “At Eltham Hill Girls she torpedoed chewing gum on entering / hitched her skirt on exiting / tissue-padded her non-existents in the upstairs loo / and choked over smoke at lunchtime behind Jubilee Gardens.”
Evaristo’s first novel to be entirely written in prose takes a simple but brilliant idea – what if Europeans had been enslaved by Africans? – and runs with it to great effect. Doris Scagglethorpe is our white heroine – she hates her appearance and wants to have her nose flattened and skin darkened – who is captured and transported to “Amarika”, where both misery and adventure await. Although Blonde Roots is Evaristo’s most hard-edged book – some sections on the slave ship are particularly tough to read – the sharp irony throughout lightens the load, and the result is highly impressive.
Sample line “My terms of engagement stipulated that it was a job for life, that my hours should run from Sunday to Monday 12am to 11.55pm daily, though I needed to be available to do overtime when required.”
This novel epitomises Evaristo’s approach at its best: pushing the reader into trying new things but never at the expense of readability. This is the story of Zuleika, a half-Nubian girl in the year AD211, who gets married off, aged 11, to a fat Roman nobleman. And the entire story is told in free verse. Zuleika resents her marriage but then falls in love with the emperor Septimius Severus (check the dates of his life to see how well that turns out). It’s a joyous ride, full of verbal energy and multilingual puns. The fact that The Emperor’s Babe was, according to Evaristo, her “most wildly enjoyable writing process” comes across in the pleasure of reading it.
Sample line “His eyes swiftly shifted from ceiling to mine / and speared me – all metal / running down my cold spine, then melting / molten liquid, flowing into the scoop of the bowl / between my hips.”
Evaristo’s superb Booker winner (she was robbed by the judges, who should never have split the prize between her and Margaret Atwood) is a populous, expansive and inclusive book: everyone is welcome. The novel cycles through the stories of 12 women, mostly black, of all ages and backgrounds. The linking stories explore social status in modern Britain – “the hidden histories” of the country – and the smooth free-verse style, with no full stops, provides an effective rhythm for plot twists and punchlines. There are elements we recognise (via Manifesto) from Evaristo’s own life – sexual experimentation (“she tried boys a couple of times / they enjoyed it / she endured it”); a woman in an abusive, controlling relationship – but Girl, Woman, Other achieves the alchemy of transforming raw material into literary gold.
Sample line “Both were disillusioned at being put up for parts such as slave, servant, prostitute, nanny or crim … and still not getting the job.”
This charming, affecting novel is about Barrington (“Barry”), a 74-year-old British-Caribbean man whose happy family life covers a small secret: he’s been having a gay affair with his best friend, Morris, for 60 years. It explores the fallout and the background (“this is what happens when 75 per cent of your life is in the past”, says Barry), and uses Evaristo’s love of textual variety and blended styles in her most controlled and beautifully effective way yet. Mr Loverman exemplifies the essence that has been there all along; what Evaristo’s longtime editor Simon Prosser calls “the flow and bounce of ordinary speech made memorable and poetic, the warmth and wit of her characterisation, the combination of high and low, funny and serious”. And it is gloriously funny. Evaristo – who cites French and Saunders as an influence, just as much as novelists – says: “If there’s no humour, I feel my writing doesn’t work in some way.” Mr Loverman works perfectly from top to tail.
Sample line “God a-damn me the day I chose to enter this hellish so-called marriage instead of following my Morris-loving, sweet-loving, full-blooded, hot-blooded, rumping-pumping, throbbing organ of an uncontainable, unrestrainable, undetainable man-loving heart.”
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