RaveThe Washington Independent Review of Books... your passport to Trinidad for the tale of one small found family and all the different shades of love that can imprison and sustain us ... The backdrop for the intertwining of these relationships — the island of Trinidad — is almost a character itself, given a kind of dispersed sentience through Persaud’s exquisite descriptions. In prose so effortless one imagines the author unscrewing the lid of a jar and simply pouring it out onto the page, Love After Love treats the reader to a sensory riot ... You’ll feel the heat of the equatorial sun on your skin, see the hot dazzle of white before your retinas adjust. The sweet flesh of cascadoux will sit on your tongue like a familiar phrase, while your eyes will water at the fiery aroma of pimento peppers dropped in hot oil ... But Persaud’s facility with language would be a mirage of flash and glimmer if it weren’t paired with an instinct for the human condition that comes through from one character to the next, each sharing the same lived-in Trinidadian dialect but bearing their own distinct voices, hearts, and minds ... Rarely are platonic and familial love given the vibrancy and immediacy they are here, but as perspectives shift among Betty, Solo, and Mr. Chetan, we’re compelled toward an urgent understanding that the love of comfort and certainty is as important as that of turbulent desire ... is an escape worth pursuing, wherever summer finds you. If you’re yearning to run for unfamiliar terrain this time of year, the words on these pages may sharpen that ache. But take heart, dear reader: Ingrid Persaud’s story will transport you, at least for now.
