Product Description

It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh’s neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn’t know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. What else can she do? Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently. It’s desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door. Gilbert’s wife Hortense, too, had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. But when she joins him she is shocked to find London shabby, decrepit, and far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2142 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 544 pages

Independent on Sunday, January 21, 2004
‘Powerful...rigorous...bittersweet...touching’

Review
‘What makes Levy’s writing so appealing is her even-handedness. All her characters can be weak, hopeless, brave, good, bad - whatever their colour. The writing is rigorous and the bittersweet ending, with its unexpected twist, touching... People can retain great dignity, however small their island’ Independent on Sunday, 25/1/04 (Independent on Sunday )

‘Every scene is rich in implication, entrancing and disturbing at the same time; the literary equivalent of a switch-back ride’ The Sunday Times, 29/2/04 (The Sunday Times )

About the Author
Andrea Levy was born in England to Jamaican parents. Her radio appearances, and readings at literary festivals, bookshops and libraries have helped her to build an enthusiastic following. Andrea is the winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Customer Reviews

A beautiful book
Andrea Levy's award winning book 'Small Island' is a story about prejudice: Britain's and American GI's racism towards the "invading darkies"; middle-class Londoners snobbery towards the Cockneys; the Jamaicans towards the "small islanders"; the British empires treatment of its Caribbean and Indian colonies.

Told from the perspective of four different characters, it tells the story of the first wave of Caribbean immigrants to Britain following World War II, through the life of Airman Joseph Gilbert and his wife Hortense. Despite fighting against the Nazi's as a member of the RAF, when Gilbert returns to his 'Mother Country' with ambitions of training to become a Lawyer, all he finds in London is unfriendly faces, hatred, and a job as Royal Mail driver. However, he does find accommodation with Queenie Bligh, who, in need of rent, lets the empty rooms of her house to immigrants and faces just as much scorn and hatred from her neighbours as a result. Events soon come to a head when Queenie's husband, Bernard, returns home from India two years after the War has ended.

Andrea Levy's writing is superb - rich, observant, engaging and funny - her characters each have a unique voice and the story or characters are never patronising or preaching, which is a great achievement for a book about racism and bigotry. 'Small Island' is a beautiful and accomplished novel, and well worth reading.

"How come England did not know me?"
Winner of the 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

RAF Blues
I read this book in two days, I thought a was reading the autobiography of my parents, except they came from Guyana. I arrived in England with my mother to Ladbroke Grove, via Liverpool in 1958. This book is accurate,poignant and painful I struggled to read past page 272, I could have written it myself. It is lyrical, humourous, sad, educative and evocative. I didn't want it to end. It deserves the Orange fiction prize well done Andrea.