My Policeman by Bethan Roberts Book Review

Welcome to my review of My Policeman by Bethan Roberts. I saw Simon Savidge recommend this book on his YouTube channel and added it to my to-be-read soon file. Then June came around, and my pride reading month meant it shot to the top of my list. It took me a while to get into it, and I wondered if Simon had recommended a duffer, but I persisted and loved this one in the end.

Click me to go to my Review

Synopsis

An exquisitely told tragic tale of thwarted love, My Policeman is soon to be adapted into film by Amazon Prime starring Harry Styles and Emma Corrin.

It is in 1950s’ Brighton that Marion first catches sight of Tom. He teaches her to swim in the shadow of the pier and Marion is smitten – determined her love will be enough for them both.

A few years later in Brighton Museum Patrick meets Tom. Patrick is besotted with Tom and opens his eyes to a glamorous, sophisticated new world.

Tom is their policeman, and in this age it is safer for him to marry Marion. The two lovers must share him, until one of them breaks and three lives are destroyed.

About The Author

Bethan Roberts was born in Abingdon. Her first novel The Pools was published in 2007 and won a Jerwood/Arvon Young Writers’ Award. Her second novel The Good Plain Cook, published in 2008, was serialized on BBC Radio 4’s Book at Bedtime and was chosen as one of Time Out’s books of the year. My Policeman was the 2012 Brighton City Read and an Irish Times Book of the Year. She also writes drama for BBC Radio 4. Bethan has worked in television, and has taught Creative Writing at Chichester University and Goldsmiths College, London. She lives in Brighton with her family. Her latest novel, Mother Island won a Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize 2015.

My Review

The book starts with Marion and her best friend Sylvia in their late teens. Marion is infatuated with Sylvia’s brother, Tom. Set in the 1950’s Marion decides the best course of action is for Tom to teach her to swim as he promised before he left for the army and later returned to train as a policeman. Tom later introduces her to his ‘friend’ Patrick, we can see that they are more than friends, but poor naïve Marion doesn’t for some time. When she does finally make the connection, which at this time is illegal and seen as perverted, she has already married Tom. Will she be prepared to share the man she has become obsessively in love with?

This had a languid start for me, I knew from the blurb that there was going to be a love triangle, but this one starts very differently from how I had expected, making me wonder if I somehow had the wrong book! In the opening scenes, we realise that Patrick has had two strokes and, against all odds, has ended up living with her and Tom at Marion’s request. However, when she says, ‘I no longer want to kill you’ we realise that this has a very dark heart. She obviously finds caring for him very difficult, and Tom doesn’t appear to be interested, which is why I felt so confused; it didn’t feel like a love triangle.

However, as I got further into the book, which is told mainly from the perspectives of Marion, and Patrick, I understood how they had ended up where they were. This is a very clever book, and it’s not until the end that you will understand it all thoroughly. There are funny parts, but mostly this is a sad tale of the lives of Marion, Tom and Patrick as they entwine and change over time, partly due to one person’s actions.

My Policeman is written in the present tense and at various points in the past, though mainly in the 1950s. It cleverly demonstrates the secrecy required to live as a homosexual in these times and the devastation caused simply by someone implying that you were ‘Comme ca’, as it was then referred to. I was previously aware of this, but Bethan Roberts has managed to make these incidents tragically emotive to read.

Interestingly, we never hear directly from Tom, who is the centre of all that happens. Instead, through Marion and Patrick, we picture him entirely from his good and bad actions. Roberts has done a brilliant job of giving all the character’s strengths and weaknesses, giving the reader a complete overview of their lives. I felt connections with the characters, especially Marion, who could be remarkably naïve at times, and you want to scream at her to open her eyes though she is blinded by her love for Tom. I also felt for Patrick, who could never be who he wanted to be and missed out on having a fully loving relationship his whole life just because of his birth.

I felt like a bystander watching My Policeman unfold, and my life feels better for it. While we like to see ourselves as enlightened now and fully understanding, mostly supportive even, this is an essential view of the past with devastation for families that can never be undone and is often brushed under the carpet and easily dismissed. Roberts has written it as beautifully as she was living the life herself.

Rated