LOVE FORMS – Claire Adam

“I’m recalling this as best I can, you understand. The truth is that I only remember impressions – images, sounds, feelings.” (9)

Claire Adam’s Love Forms started out strong – a first-person narrative with a lyricism to the storytelling that I enjoyed.  It didn’t last. On page 11, she writes: “In the darkness, the fallen coconuts all around us glimmered like skulls.” I never recovered. Was it Adam who gave me this impossibility or Dawn Bishop, our unreliable narrator trying to make her story of being smuggled to another country as a teen to give birth to the child she placed for adoption sound flowery?  And that’s a theme throughout the novel – real pretty imagery that just is just off. If intentional, Adam could have done a better job of showing that it’s Dawn who is painting the pictures that raised my eyebrows.  And if intentional, why?  What purpose would it serve? We already know we can’t trust what she’s saying.

This rambling, stumbling story takes us  from a pregnant 16-year-old in 1980 to a 58-year-old divorcee questioning her choices and thinking about her baby girl.  “She just drifts in and out of my thoughts, the way that a breeze might pass through a room.” (44) In between this search for the child she placed for adoption, is a geopolitical drama of time and place for Trinidad and Tobago that nearly fades into the backdrop of the family saga, guilt, and trauma Dawn suffered when she was smuggled into Venezuela for four months, to live with strangers, birth a child, and be sent home like nothing happened.  “You were the lion. I didn’t realize it back then,” she tells her father when she returns home as an adult. (223)

Full of emotion but with unrealized potential, Love Forms didn’t do it for me. I know some folks have already questioned its inclusion in the longlist and wonder if SJP’s involvement should have made it ineligible for consideration. As for me, I think  there are other novels that would have easily fit in this Booker slot – Mottley’s The Girls Who Grew Big being one.  (Mottley’s use of language is a thing of art.)

Right now, this sits at the bottom of my ratings.

*As part of my Booker 101, I’ve been posting on instagram three times per book. Today is the final thoughts, which I always share here. Below are the previous entries for this book.

Booker 101 “Don’t Judge a Book…” Wednesdays

The UK and US covers for Adam’s LOVE FORMS are both beautiful, but this is the year I seem to be liking the US covers more.

The UK cover features bright colors and a dated font that is reminiscent of 70s-80s romance novels.  The jungle of flowers on the ocean blue is indicative of the wildness and beauty of Trinidad and Tobago. It’s okay, but it doesn’t really do much for me.

The US cover is striking with artistic green and the corner of the ocean with the citrus fruit in the center. The citrus fruit works because the Bishop family owns and operates Bishop Fruit Juices – they are wealthy because of the fruit they grow.  Other than that, however, fruit doesn’t show up as much as I feel like it could.  Don’t get me wrong – this cover is lovely, but I’d have replaced the citrus fruit with a similarly drawn little brown dog.  Dogs, especially the knee-high brown one, are frequently on the pages.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I didn’t like this book.  I did, however, find the cover striking as a work of art, just not as the cover to this novel.

Booker 101 Quick & Dirty Monday!

LOVE FORMS: Claire Adam
Hogarth : 29 July 2025 (US)
Faber & Faber: 19 June 2025 (UK)
Page Count: 271

First line: It was my father who made the arrangements.

Blurbed by:

Charmaine Wilkerson – (No Booker nominations – I’m a huge fan though)

Sara Collins – (No Booker nominations – 2024 Booker judge)

Monique Roffey – (Numerous literary awards – no Booker nominations)

Claire Kilroy – (Numerous literary awards – no Booker nominations)

Romesh Gunesekera – (Shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize for REEF – 2024 International Booker Prize judge)

Maria Keyes – (Numerous literary awards – no Booker nominations)

Denis deCaires Narain – ( Senior Lecturer and reader in postcolonial studies – not an author)

LOVE FORMS is Claire Adam’s second novel.  Her first, GOLDEN CHILD, was published by current Booker judge Sarah Jessica Parker’s SJP for Hogarth. Adam was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and currently lives in London.