Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

When the Book­er Prize longlist was an­nounced at the end of Ju­ly, Love Forms by T&T–born au­thor Claire Adam was among the 13 ti­tles named — a recog­ni­tion that still feels sur­re­al to her weeks lat­er.

Adam left Trinidad at 18 to study Physics in the Unit­ed States. Speak­ing with WE Mag­a­zine last week, she re­called: “I liked both Sci­ence and Eng­lish. I con­sid­ered ma­jor­ing in Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture at col­lege, but Sci­ence seemed like a safer bet at the time. You know Caribbean par­ents: ‘What kind of job will you get with a de­gree in Eng­lish?!’”

But her love for Lit­er­a­ture nev­er fad­ed. At uni­ver­si­ty, she al­so stud­ied Japan­ese and Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture, paving the way for her even­tu­al ca­reer as a nov­el­ist. Love Forms is her sec­ond book.

“There’s a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion for many peo­ple, from read­ing to writ­ing,” she said when asked how she be­gan.

Her for­ma­tive years in T&T con­tin­ue to shape her work.

“Those 18 years of grow­ing up in Trinidad have con­tin­ued to have such an im­pact. No mat­ter how long I live out­side of Trinidad, it will still have an im­pact.”

She al­so draws in­spi­ra­tion from fel­low Caribbean lit­er­ary gi­ants, in­clud­ing VS Naipaul, Derek Wal­cott, and Earl Lovelace. Naipaul re­mains the last T&T writer to win the Book­er Prize, in 1971 for In a Free State.

The Book­er short­list of six will be an­nounced on Sep­tem­ber 23. Re­gard­less of the out­come, Adam sees her longlist­ing as a ma­jor mile­stone: “It came as a to­tal sur­prise, and I think it still hasn’t sunk in. You can’t over­es­ti­mate how enor­mous an ho­n­our it is.”

The recog­ni­tion has trans­formed her nor­mal­ly qui­et life.

“I’ve sud­den­ly be­come ex­treme­ly busy. I nor­mal­ly live a very qui­et life. Sud­den­ly, it’s all go­ing mad… in a good way. I’m not com­plain­ing. It’s cer­tain­ly a change of pace.

Each book has tak­en me about five years. Dur­ing that time, I’m very reclu­sive — al­most a her­mit. I hard­ly so­cialise, I don’t go on­line. It’s ba­si­cal­ly just me and the book.”

Love Forms opens in the Caribbean, with 16-year-old Dawn as the pro­tag­o­nist. Preg­nant and un­der pres­sure, she trav­els from Trinidad to Venezuela to give birth in se­cret and place the ba­by for adop­tion. Decades lat­er, Dawn is liv­ing in Lon­don. She has been mar­ried and di­vorced, has two grown sons, but still feels the pull of the past — a pull that in­ten­si­fies when some­one con­tacts her on­line claim­ing to be her long-lost daugh­ter.

The nov­el ex­plores moth­er­hood and the en­dur­ing bond it cre­ates, while res­onat­ing with cur­rent re­al­i­ties in the re­gion, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the re­cent mi­gra­tion flows be­tween Venezuela and T&T.

“Life is hard for writ­ers,” Adam ad­mit­ted. “You’re al­ways ques­tion­ing whether this is how you should be spend­ing your time. But this Book­er longlist­ing is a re­al seal of ap­proval.”

Like many Caribbean au­thors liv­ing abroad, she has grap­pled with how to write au­then­ti­cal­ly for an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence with­out over­ex­plain­ing cul­tur­al nu­ances.

“I know that’s some­thing Trinida­di­an writ­ers grap­ple with — part­ly be­cause of our lan­guage, but al­so cul­tur­al and so­ci­etal things. It’s like, do you stop and ex­plain every lit­tle thing?”

Adam hopes read­ers will be deeply moved by Love Forms. For her, be­ing part of the T&T writ­ing com­mu­ni­ty is an ho­n­our — and she has al­ready achieved some­thing no one has since Naipaul in the 1970s.