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Jan 30, 2012

Petra X rated it:

I wanted to enjoy this book because I am a West Indian now and did the reverse journey - first world UK to backward little Caribbean island, but the journey was a lot more enjoyable than the book.

I finished it by an act of will and apart from odd scenes of violence or lasciviousness, it didn't hold my attention. It was such an easy read that the pages flowed into each other leaving no trace on my brain at all. Like the sea washing the sand clean with each wave, so did each page disa More...

4 comments like (15 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Christine E. rated it:

I loved this book, but I realize that I am very biased because I am Jamaican, and have many relatives who emigrated to the UK from Jamaica, so the characters were immediately real and recognizable to me.

Some reviewers have complained that her use of dialect was heavy-handed, but from my perspective, she actually tones down Jamaican Patois (also called Jamaican Creole) significantly to make it understandable to non-Jamaicans. On a visit to Jamaica last year, I heard her interviewed More...

2 comments like (22 people liked it)

Sep 04, 2007

Patricia rated it:

Christine mentioned that some readers thought this book was heavy-handed in its use of patois, which I thought was interesting. I have no way of judging how authentic the dialect was, but to me, it wasn't at all disruptive to the flow or hard to read, and I enjoyed the "sound" of it.

My main criticsm is that the story of one of the characters, Bernard, seemed like an afterthought to the central account. And unlike the other three characters, who all have their flaws, I could More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

May 21, 2007

Angela rated it:

Fantastic novel, a real eye opener! Small Island is a novel that connects continents in wartime. It takes the reader from Jamaica to England and on to India in the days of the second World War. Four main characters connect the dots. A Gilbert, a young Jamaican who joins the RAF to fight Hitler but finds himself fighting racism instead; Queenie, a young white woman who takes in Jamaican Lodgers; her husband Bernard, who is fighting the Japs in India; and the Jamaican girl Hortense, who travels to More...

1 comment like (12 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

Canuck-in-Oz rated it:

Told in alternating narratives by four persons in both 1948 London and the time ‘before’, this is a story of race, colonialism, imperialism, sexuality and war. The story is about Hortense and her husband Gilbert from Jamaica who move to London and about Queenie Bligh and her husband Bernard, a white couple in London. Bernard goes off to war so Queenie takes in boarders, mostly black, including Gilbert. Gilbert, a Jamaican who joined the RAF to defend the mother country during WWII brings over hi More...

2 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 03, 2012

Vicky rated it:

Around the World = Jamaica

Levy weaves together the stories of four characters, each a part of a forgotten story of post-war Britain and the Commonwealth. Hortense, a product of a colonial upbringing where her light skin and education set her above other Jamaicans; Gilbert, a former RAF serviceman returned to England on the Empire Windrush; Queenie, surviving by any means possible on the home front, and then as a woman on her own in post-war London; and Bernard, ignorant and narrow-m More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 24, 2008

Michele rated it:

The story mainly takes place in 1948 UK. It is told from different character's perceptions. Hortense is a Jamaican teacher who aspires to become a "high class teacher in the UK." Gilbert is the Jamaican man she weds to get herself there. Queenie is a beautiful white British woman who takes in boarders when she believes that her husband has died in the war. Bernard is Queenie's bigoted husband, who joins the RAF to avoid the draft and is stationed in India where he ends up fighting. More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Nov 10, 2009

Paul rated it:

Well, it was pretty good. It has a lot of heart. Levy is a writer who sometimes teases the reader by dangling a big splodgy sentimental cliche in front of them only to swerve round it at the last moment. She's no fool. I've been looking for novels about immigrants, I read The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (which was kind of a drag) and I have Petropolis sitting on my shelf (hope that will be better). (Further suggestions welcomed). Small Island is about (two) Jamaicans coming to 1948 London More...

4 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2007

Talia rated it:

Andrea Levy's Small Island is a book about misconceptions of identity and race during World War II era Britain. The story revolves around Jamaicans who move to England as they believe they are "British" as they feel entitled to all the Mother Country has to offer. What they realize is that not everything is as it may seem. The best feature of this book is the way Levy tries to explain "colonial politics." During the height of colonialism, European rulers instructed their subj More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Nov 07, 2010

Kay added it

Great author -- wonderful read

3 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 29, 2012

Margaret rated it:

This was a wonderful novel, focusing on the lives of two couples in post-war Britain - one Black, one White.

Though actually, a significant amount of the book takes place before and during the war - it starts in 1948, with Hortense arriving off the boat from Jamaica to meet her husband Gilbert, who went ahead of her six months ago. You get the story of her first few days told from both their points of view, and a small amount through the eyes of their landlady, Queenie Bligh, and then y More...

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Dec 19, 2011

Richard rated it:

Rating: 2.5* of five

This woman and I are not a good fit. I read and loathed The Long Song, finding it tedious and contrived. I got this excrescence out of the library because I thought it unfair to judge an author by one book. Hell, I even gave EGGERS more than one book.

Small Island is a mean-spirited, judgmental, and sarcastic book. In the guise of "telling it like it is", Levy manages to make the reader detest every single person she describes as a narrow, unkind, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

May 11, 2011

Mike added it

Genre: Young Adult
Awards: Whitbread Book of the Year
Rating: 5/5
Summary:
The book opens with a young English girl named Queenie. The prologue sets to portray her as sympathetic yet prejudiced towards blacks. Then the book introduces Hortense Joseph a young Afro-Jamaican girl who grows up with her cousin Michael’s family. When Hortense matures she goes to school to become a teacher. She desperately longs to move to London. She has wonderful visions of an idealistic London wher More...

0 comments like

May 01, 2011

Joanna rated it:

I had very mixed feeling about this book. I picked it up because Masterpiece is showing an adaptation at the end of April; I didn't know anything about it beyond the fact that it was about a Jamaican couple that immigrates to London right after World War II. I was expecting to sympathize with Hortense, I was expecting Gilbert to be a traditional sort of hero, and I was expecting a depiction of racism and bigotry similar to the depiction of those same things in the United States during the same t More...

0 comments like

Aug 26, 2010

LindyLouMac rated it:

I have already read some really enjoyable books this year and this one rates very highly amongst them. A well written novel about War, Love, Prejudice and the British Empire. In all innoncence I had no idea that racial prejudice ran so high in the UK during and just after the Second World War.
Synopsis:Amazon.co.uk
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 More...

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Aug 13, 2010

Mae rated it:

I thought "Small Island" would be good since it won not only the Orange Prize (Britain's literary contest for women writers) but something called "The Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best." Not to mention the Commonwealth Writers' prize and a bunch of other awards. And I was right - I devoured this book. Levy's amazing storytelling sucks you in from the beginning and makes you care about the characters, Jamaican immigrants to "the Mother Country" of England ri More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jun 18, 2010

Jocelyn rated it:

Four British subjects cope with WWII and its aftermath: Gilbert, a witty Jamaican RAF vet who has emigrated to London; Hortense, another Jamaican who has entered into a marriage of convenience with Gilbert in order to find her proper station among the English; Queenie, an English butcher's daughter trying to make it in London; and Bernard, her narrow-minded, useless husband. What saves this book from being a morality play about bigotry are the finely-drawn characters and their interesting parall More...

0 comments like

Apr 25, 2010

Alien rated it:

I heard about this book on BBC World Book Club and picked it up because of how much I enjoyed the interview with Andrea Levy. I am glad I heard about this because I have really enjoyed reading this...More than many other works of fiction I have read recently perhaps. I love character stories in a historical setting so this was definitely a winner on those counts. Someone tried to sum this up as being about racial prejudice during and after WWII. However, I think this story is so much more th More...

0 comments like

Nov 01, 2009

Amy rated it:

I have just picked up this book after noticing an upcoming dramatisation, and I really love it. I think the author makes the three central characters likeable but realistic, they all have their flaws. I warmed to Queenie especially and found some of her dialogue laugh out loud.

I tend to agree with other reviews about Bernard, he does seem to come out of nowhere, and I can't find anything to like about him, although this allows more sympathy to Queenie, who has married him to escape More...

1 comment like

Aug 23, 2009

Gail rated it:

"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 husb More...

1 comment like

May 21, 2009

Becky rated it:

Small Island however, unlike The Line of Beauty, was a pleasure to re-read. Andrew Levy's novel is a masterfully constructed collection of narratives of her four central characters, as they struggle to sustain their livings and beliefs in the face of the Second World War. Gilbert and Hortense begin their tales in Jamaica, with Gilbert travelling over to London first as an airman, then to seek his fortune in a post Blitz ravaged city. Hortense follows as his wife, and experience a certain amount More...

1 comment like

May 14, 2009

Sue rated it:

All through this book I could 'hear' the voices of my childhood. Comments made about immigrants from the West Indies made by my neighbours and family were echoed in this novel.

The story is set in Jamaica and the UK. Gilbert and his wife Hortense struggle to find the 'mother country', the one that Gilbert fought for in the war and the one that Hortense has dreamed of living in. Unfortunately they had seen it through rose-tinted specs and the reality didn't give them streets paved w More...

5 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 21, 2010

Pikachu rated it:

What a great book! It takes place during WWII, I believe, and focuses on the lives of four individuals: Hortense, Gilbert, Bernard, and Queenie.

Hortense and Gilbert are Jamaican immigrants who have come to England for a better future; Gilbert is a war veteran and Hortense used to be a teacher. Bernard is also a veteran, who was delayed coming home because he was thrown in prison. Queenie is his wife, who took in black tenants to help pay the bills while he was gone. She also has a se More...

0 comments like

Sep 13, 2010

Chris rated it:

I'm trying to figure out my reaction to this book, other than the fact that I loved it. I have a hard time putting into words my feelings about this book.

Small Island is the story of four people in the aftermath of WW II. Levy is concerned with the experience of immigrants and racial issues in post War London.

I dont think the story could have been told in a shorter span, and it is one of those that you understand why it won the awards that it did. I didn't find t More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 04, 2010

Darryl rated it:

This novel revolves around four primary characters: a Jamaican couple who moves to London in the first wave of postwar immigration from the West Indies in 1948, and an Anglo British woman who lives in a large house in Earls Court while her husband, a meek bank clerk, serves in the Royal Air Force during World War II.

Hortense Roberts is the illegitimate daughter of a highly respected Jamaican government official and an illiterate country girl. She is blessed with the "warm honey( More...

0 comments like

Dec 14, 2011

Lisa rated it:

3 and 3/4 stars

This is the kind of book that is easy to read but you get to the end and you don't know how you felt about it all. It didn't really make me feel much but it was effective in the art of storytelling.

Or I guess, showing us what England was like in post World War 2 England through the eyes of four fictional characters. There is Queenie, a white, English woman who is not afraid of what other people think; Hortense, a Jamaican woman who comes to England to be with h More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 28, 2011

Natalie rated it:

This is an amazing book, both beautifully written and horribly uncomfortable. It roused all sorts of emotion in me: At the start of the book, I found I could muster little sympathy for any of the four main characters; they all came across as fairly unpleasant. But by the end of the book, my heart broke for all of them, even Bernhard (who I found hard like at all, even given his difficult upbringing and wartime experiences). The way the book is written--from alternating points of view, and jumpin More...

0 comments like

Jul 07, 2010

Laura rated it:

Though it does a rather wonderful job of capturing a specific time and place (it was, after all, the assigned reading for my semester abroad in London), and though the characters are somewhat lovable, distinctive (in personality traits if not in voice on the page), and the story engaging enough...I was far too frustrated by Levy's writing style, and her method of hammering in the symbolic representations of each character, and her way of using first person varied narrators--but without much dist More...

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Feb 05, 2009

Bookmarks Magazine added it

Levy, the child of parents who sailed from the Caribbean in the first wave of postwar immigration, fictionalizes the immigrant experience in her fourth novel. Relying on memoirs and oral histories, she describes in heartwrenching detail the lives of four individuals in 1948 England. Her plain, humorous style underscores the gravity and immediacy of her themes. She pens deep, convincing characters-Queenie speaks like a true Londoner; Bernard sounds like he served in India. The couples' interactio

More...

1 comment like

Feb 11, 2009

Siria rated it:

Levy writes with affection for her characters, a great deal of spirit, and quite a bit of humour, and Small Island does deal with a period of history that is quite often ignored—the first great wave of emigration from Jamaica to the UK from the late 1940s onwards. As a recreation of that time, I found it quite interesting; Levy is, I think, fictionalising some of her parents' experiences, and many events in the book have the ring of truth to them, however depressing that truth might be. That sai More...

1 comment like