Small Island (Paperback)

by Andrea Levy (Author) "It brought it all back to me..." (more)
Key Phrases: darkie woman, blinking heck, cheeky blighter, Gilbert Joseph, Michael Roberts, Auntie Dorothy (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Andrea Levy's award-winning novel, Small Island, deftly brings two bleak families into crisp focus. First a Jamaican family, including the well-intentioned Gilbert, who can never manage to say or do exactly the right thing; Romeo Michael, who leaves a wake of women in his path; and finally, Hortense, whose primness belies her huge ambition to become English in every way possible. The other unhappy family is English, starting with Queenie, who escapes the drudgery of being a butcher's daughter only to marry a dull banker. As the chapters reverse chronology and the two groups collide and finally mesh, the book unfolds through time like a photo album, and Levy captures the struggle between class, race, and sex with a humor and tenderness that is both authentic and bracing. The book is cinematic in the best way--lighting up London's bombed-out houses and wartime existence with clarity and verve while never losing her character's voice or story. --Meg Halverson --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. After winning the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, Levy's captivating fourth novel sweeps into a U.S. edition with much-deserved literary fanfare. Set mainly in the British Empire of 1948, this story of emigration, loss and love follows four characters—two Jamaicans and two Britons—as they struggle to find peace in postwar England. After serving in the RAF, Jamaican Gilbert Joseph finds life in his native country has become too small for him. But in order to return to England, he must marry Hortense Roberts—she's got enough money for his passage—and then set up house for them in London. The pair move in with Queenie Bligh, whose husband, Bernard, hasn't returned from his wartime post in India. But when does Bernard turn up, he is not pleased to find black immigrants living in his house. This deceptively simple plot poises the characters over a yawning abyss of colonialism, racism, war and the everyday pain that people inflict on one another. Levy allows readers to see events from each of the four character's' point of view, lightly demonstrating both the subjectivity of truth and the rationalizing lies that people tell themselves when they are doing wrong. None of the characters is perfectly sympathetic, but all are achingly human. When Gilbert realizes that his pride in the British Empire is not reciprocated, he wonders, "How come England did not know me?" His question haunts the story as it moves back and forth in time and space to show how the people of two small islands become inextricably bound together. Agent, David Grossman. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Headline Review; 1st Published edition (September 13, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 075530750X
• ISBN-13: 978-0755307500
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #986,191 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "How come England did not know me?", April 4, 2005

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This review is from: Small Island: A Novel (Paperback)

Winner of the UK's Whitbread Prize for Best Novel, the Orange Prize, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Small Island may soon find deserved success in the US, too. Set in London in 1948, it focuses on the diaspora of Jamaicans, who, escaping economic hardship on their own "small island," move to England, the Mother Country, for which the men have fought during World War II. Their reception is not the warm embrace they have hoped for, nor are the opportunities for success as plentiful as they have dreamed.

Four characters alternate points of view, telling their stories with an honesty and vibrancy that make the tragicomedy of their lives both realistic and emotionally involving. Queenie Bligh, a white woman with a mentally ill father-in-law, takes in boarders when her husband Bernard does not return from war in India. Most of her boarders are black immigrants from the Caribbean, desperate men and women willing to pay high prices for small rooms. Gilbert Joseph, a Jamaican who participated in the Battle of Britain, is one of Queenie's tenants, working as a truck driver, the only job available to him. Gilbert's bride Hortense arrives from Jamaica with her heavy trunk a few months later, ready to show London her superior "British" manners. When Queenie's husband Bernard unexpectedly returns shortly thereafter, life at Queenie's changes forever.

These four characters, through their often touching first-person narratives, convey their hopes and dreams for the future, revealing, as their stories intersect, their personalities, family backgrounds, experiences in love, commitments to the Mother Country, economic predicaments, and, not incidentally, their prejudices.

Levy imbues this novel with fine detail, both in her descriptions of the physical surroundings and in the emotional subtleties with which her characters react to their postwar lives. Her ear for dialogue is exquisite, both in the everyday speech of Londoners and in the dialect and sentence patterns of Jamaicans. Casual, conversational tones bring the characters to life, while Gilbert's recognition of "the way things are" keeps the novel from becoming polemical or strident, despite its thematic emphasis on prejudice and injustice. Levy's touch is light, often humorous, and her scenes of amusing irony are nicely balanced by scenes of high drama.

The author's tendency to tie her male characters to real, historical events--the Hindu/Muslim riots in Calcutta (experienced by Bernard) and a race-based riot at a London movie theater (experienced by Gilbert)--and her reliance on extreme coincidence to conclude the action, do occasionally feel intrusive and manipulative, but this is a minor quibble. This hugely conceived novel has everything going for it--well-drawn characters, vivid descriptions of an unusual time in postwar London, important themes which are not beaten to death, and lively action and interactions which keep the reader constantly involved. Mary Whipple

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful storyteller, engrossing book once you give it a chance!, February 15, 2006

By	Kalina Foussier "day-dreamer" (Middle Earth) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Small Island: A Novel (Paperback)

Although I read the reviews, this is the first time I have written one. I am an avid reader and went back to this site to see if there is a sequel to this book, I enjoyed it so much. When I read some of the negative reviews, I felt compelled to give my positive opinion. This book began slowly but quickly became engrossing. In retrospect the slow beginning added to the build up of the flavor of Jamaican life in contrast with that of life in 1948 England. Each of the characters was human to me. They each had unique perceptions (common in youth) that were shattered over the course of the book, each in different ways. I ended the book with a warm feeling for all of the characters and a strong sense of wondering what will happen next. It amazed me that someone could feel confident enough to write a review not even reading the entire book! I read it all and I'm looking for more of the same! Great job!

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Falls short of earlier promise, March 26, 2007

By	W. Dagnatchew "Avid book reader" (NYC, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Small Island: A Novel (Paperback)

This book is about the 2 small islands of Jamaica and Britain and has a good start but it's all downhill from there, the book fails because the characters are for the most part unlikable it was hard to care about any of them. The premise of this book seems to be that racism exists everywhere even in the small predominantly black island of Jamaica. Where Levy loses her footing is when she claims one form of racism is better than another. The story centers predominantly around the characters of Hortense, Gilbert and Queenie.

The bulk of the book focuses on Hortense, a light skinned black woman living in Jamaica. Because she is light she has opportunities and is given breaks that she does not deserve(ie she is given good grades in cooking and it is shown in a comical way later that she obviously cant cook). Hortense glides through life as a light skinned woman in Jamaica and looks down on darker blacks as being "rough" or "coarse" but when she arrives in England and the tables are turned she is viewed with the prejudices that she had reserved for others. Because she is black most of the English people she meets thinks she is dirty, and lower class. Does all of this force Hortense to rethink her earlier views and prejudices that she had for other darker Jamaicans? Sadly the answer is a resounding No! Instead Hortense cries and feels sorry for herself because of the discrimination and racist attitudes she faces in Britain conveniently forgetting what went on in Jamaica. She feels it's okay for her to benefit from skin color discrimination in Jamaica but it's not okay when discrimination is used against her in England. Hortense never comes to any self-awareness but goes on to the end of the book with the same small minded attitudes and prejudices that she had when the book started. It was very hard to care at all about this character as she is also very selfish, narrow minded, and never experiences any personal growth or enlightenment. She goes through the book thinking the world revolves around her, she uses her friends, and when things don't go her way she cries and feels sorry for herself at what she see as the horrible injustice of her not always getting her own way.

Gilbert, Hortense's husband, doesn't fare much better. He also glides through life, and doesnt seem very bright. He puts up with a lot of Hortense's crap and seems pathetically grateful when she is nicer to him. Hortense only warms up to her husband when he gives her what her friend wanted(a nice home in London). Which goes to show how pathetic Hortense is as a character she doesnt even have her own dreams but is content to steal the boyfriend and dreams of another.

Queenie is the most likable character, but her story is the most absurd. She marries her husband Bernard for reasons that are not entirely clear. She doesn't love him, doesn't particularly seem to like him and is relieved when he goes off to war. Then inexplicably when he doesn't return to her after the war she is desperate to have him back. After the war she takes in black boarders because she knows her husband wouldn't like it and is hoping he will hear of it and come back to her. A few chapters later however, it is revealed that she doesn't love her husband but is in fact in love with another man whom she is desperate to be with. This contradicts what was said earlier but it only gets worse from here.

The whole baby part of the story was completely unbelievable. An overweight woman could hide the fact that she was pregnant but Queenie is described as very thin. Bernard even says when he sees her after the war that she is much thinner than he remembered, there is no way that she could hide the fact that she was in her last few weeks of pregnancy. I don't care how tightly you bind yourself the belly is going to show. It's also pretty silly because Bernard comments on her flat stomach when he sees her in her nightgown and then two weeks later flat stomach Queenie has a baby. When liberal minded Queenie rejects her baby because he is too dark, considering her earlier views and the fact that she claims to be madly in love with the baby's father, was just too silly for me. It was also unclear why she didn't leave for Canada like she wanted to when she found out she was pregnant. The time frame also didn't work. For the whole England part of the story to take place in the space of 10 months was also not believable.

Bernard is given a few chapters in the book but he is not very bright, more of a caricature than a character. He is the stereotypical British man, who is sexually repressed, racist, and a bit on the stupid side. Thankfully only a small section of the book is devoted to him.

Levy is a good writer and the book is at least readable even though her characters are not likable. Unfortunately Levy's message seems to be that Jamaica's racism and prejudices that has a darker underclass is better than Britains prejudices that views all blacks, regardless of skin color the same, but that Britains racist attitudes is better than Americas racism because America has institutionalised racism. It would have been a much stronger book if the message was you shouldn't judge someone based solely on their skin color. Hortense is upper class in Jamaica because she is light but lower class in England because although light she is still black. Racism is racism and one form of it is not better than another.