My Policeman - Bethan Roberts

‘The words that come to mind when I think of my policeman are light and delight.’

This is a wonderful literary novel from Bethan Roberts. Beautifully written, heart rending in it’s pain, not a word out of place I felt, and it tells of the love, secrets, shame and torment endured in the lives of three people, Marion, Tom and Patrick.

The opening grabs the reader’s attention. We are immediately plunged into Marion’s very personal written confession addressed directly to a man named Patrick, and the year is now 1999. She revisits her earlier life, as a teenage girl in Brighton. Marion falls for her friend Sylvie’s older brother Tom. He is ‘the beautiful young man with the big arms and the dark blond curls’ and once she has seen him she is rapt. With Tom heading off to national service, Marion trains as a teacher and awaits his return with hopes of a future for them together. Despite small inklings and some words from Sylvie, Marion marries Tom, now a policeman, and believes their relationship will work.

As we progress further into the story, we then are privy to some of Patrick’s diary accounts from back in 1957, when he fell in love with his policeman. Patrick works as a curator in Brighton Museum, and having met Tom by chance one day, Patrick introduces him to the appeal of art and opens up a new world to him. There is a beautiful, tender mutual attraction between them but at the time they meet there is nothing but condemnation for any romantic relationship that the two might have.

The dual narratives of Marion and Patrick take us through the whole of the story, as we learn from them about their perspectives on their relationship with the man who dominates both their lives; the man they must share until it becomes too much and their worlds collapse.

I really loved this novel and read it in only a few sittings – it’s a compelling story. I couldn’t wait to discover the revelations and details about Marion and Patrick’s lives with Tom, to find out how the past had unfolded for each of them and what more could happen in the present. The author depicts the emotions of Marion and Patrick so vividly; as we hear from them both first-hand and know of their hopes, their past pain, their longings and disappointments.

Bethan Roberts convincingly brings to life an era when women were still limited in their career choices, still intended primarily for life at home and expected to marry and raise a family, and an era when the love that is shared between Patrick and Tom is something to be ashamed of, hidden away; men who loved each other were referred to as ‘sexual inverts’ and were punished.

It was heartbreaking to think of the pain and sadness of wasted love and lives ruined by the constraints and judgements of society. This novel captures that heartbreak, and it absolutely pulsates with the sadness inherent in it all.

A perceptive, emotional and absorbing read by a talented writer. Marvellous.


Reviewed by Lindsay Healy

Published by Chatto & Windus

Reviewed for amazon vine