My Policeman

June 7, 2021
Roberts (The Good Plain Cook) serves up a complex and nuanced exploration of a love triangle in Peacehaven, England. The story begins in 1999 with the line, “I considered starting with these words: I no longer want to kill you—because I really don’t.” The speaker is Marion, and her listener, Patrick, whom she is caring for after he’d suffered a severe stroke, is her captive audience. Having baited this hook, Roberts then flashes back 48 years to provide the backstory for the dramatic opening. Marion explains how at 14 she met the third member of this romantic triangle, Tom, the slightly older brother of a school friend. Her infatuation with Tom continues into adulthood, after he becomes a policeman and, eventually, Marion’s spouse. But Tom and Patrick, a gay art curator, are also attracted to one another. Roberts cleverly changes narrators to provide alternate perspectives on the developing intricacies and intimacies, and is especially good with the sections in which Patrick describes the challenges of being gay in 1950s Britain, a period when sex between men was illegal and gay people were subjected to blackmail. It adds up to a moving depiction of human passions, frailties, and struggles.

June 15, 2021
A woman looks back on her life with her husband and his gay lover. Inspired by the love life of novelist E.M. Forster, Roberts' new book captures an unconventional--and illegal--love triangle in 1950s England. Opening in October 1999, retired schoolteacher Marion is writing a "confession of sorts" to Patrick, her husband's lover, for whom she is caring after a near-fatal stroke: "When I am finished, I plan to read this account to you, Patrick, because you can't answer back any more." From there, Marion's letter travels back 48 years to when she met her future husband, Tom. She tells the story of her pining for Tom and how their friendship turned into (an oft one-sided) courtship. The narrative framing allows her to offer insight into her past from the perch of the present ("I remember that I once felt intense and secret things, just like you, Patrick"). About Tom and Marion's whirlwind wedding, she writes, "At the time it was thrilling, this dizzy rush into marriage, and it was flattering, too. But now I suspect he wanted to get it over with, before he changed his mind." Eventually, the novel switches perspectives and offers Patrick's journal entries from the past. He writes about his beloved job as a museum curator; his relationship with Tom (whom he calls "my policeman"); and navigating his sexuality during a time when being gay was illegal. As their lives become more entangled, Marion slowly realizes the truth about Patrick and Tom. When a rash and unforgivable decision is made, their lives are changed forever. The novel's dueling perspectives allow both Marion and Patrick to explore the pain and joy of loving the same man. Roberts beautifully captures the devastation of being unable or unwilling to live in one's truth, and the quiet ending offers a poignant moment of respite for everyone. Marion, Tom, and Patrick haven't led the lives they expected or wanted to, but there's still time left. Nothing can be taken back, but perhaps the truth can begin to heal them all. A melancholy story about love, loss, and unnecessary suffering.

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July 1, 2021
Roberts' dramatic novel, first published in the UK in 2012 and now adapted for a forthcoming film starring Harry Styles, Emma Corrin, and David Dawson, poignantly depicts a love triangle that tears apart three lives. In 1950s Brighton, schoolteacher Marion Taylor has had a longtime crush on her friend's older brother, the blond, athletic Tom Burgess. They grow close as he gives her swimming lessons, but Marion ignores signs that something is amiss. To achieve respectability and hide his romantic relationship with museum curator Patrick Hazelwood, Tom, a police constable, marries Marion. Jealousy soon rears its head. Roberts tells the story through Patrick's journal and Marion's confessions, which she pens in 1999 while caring for Patrick following his stroke. Their accounts make for riveting but occasionally uncomfortable reading. Marion doesn't seem particularly kind, while Patrick endangers himself by writing about his feelings and actions, since being gay was illegal at the time. Both call Tom "my policeman," and one senses love and defiant possessiveness in the word my. Scenes of seaside Brighton and the era's repressive attitudes are skillfully rendered.

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Starred review from July 23, 2021

Patrick Hazelwood, the former lover of Marion Burgess's husband Tom, lies mute and paralyzed from a stroke, while Marion sits by his bedside composing a letter to him about the profound and unsettling effect he has had on her life. Excerpts from her letter alternate with Patrick's diary, which offers his version of the same events. For each, the titular policeman in question is Tom Burgess. For Marion, Tom was her teenage crush, the handsome older brother of her best friend. In her letter, she recalls conniving to get closer to him by asking for swimming lessons; then, under pressure from both their families and from the police force, Tom becomes her husband. For Patrick, an urbane curator of European art who meets Tom at the Brighton Museum, he is the forbidden object of lust, then love, in a time and place (1950s England) when such love was considered unacceptable. For everyone to remain safe, Marion and Patrick must share Tom, but the results are catastrophic. VERDICT Like Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, this latest novel by Roberts (The Pools) teems with sexual tension and the innocence and ignorance that caused so much heartache in the intolerant era just before the sexual revolution. This story is beautifully written and ineffably sad.--Barbara Love, formerly at Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

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