Small Island in Reading with Style

Feb 25, 2020 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: women, twenty-first-century, 5-star-reads, kindle, 1001-books, awards-commonwealth-prize

Is this really so good, or was I just in the right spot to be reading it? I honestly don't know - maybe both. In any case, I think the Goodreads description doesn't do it justice. It speaks of the immigrant experience as if all immigrant experiences are alike. They are not. This is the story of Jamaican immigrants who came to England for the better life they had seen - or heard about - during WWII. And I'll be honest: I winced more than once.

The novel is told in alternating sections called 1948 Is this really so good, or was I just in the right spot to be reading it? I honestly don't know - maybe both. In any case, I think the Goodreads description doesn't do it justice. It speaks of the immigrant experience as if all immigrant experiences are alike. They are not. This is the story of Jamaican immigrants who came to England for the better life they had seen - or heard about - during WWII. And I'll be honest: I winced more than once.

The novel is told in alternating sections called 1948 and Before. Each section is divided into its own chapters, the title of each chapter telling us in whose point of view we are getting information. The first about 3/4 of the novel rotates between Queenie, the daughter of an English butcher and his hard-working wife; Gilbert, a Jamaican who volunteered for the RAF and first became acquainted with England during the war; and Hortense, Gilbert's wife, so naive it would make you blush but who had an inflated opinion of her own worth. The last chapters are dominated by Bernard, Queenie's husband, who was stationed in India during the war, though the others also have something to offer. There is also a supporting character who does not have a voice, but was, for me, an important element. Arthur, Bernard's father, lives with Queenie and Bernard. He served in the first world war and came home shell-shocked, does not speak, and must be cared for.

The prose is good, I don't want to diminish it. But it is characterization that makes this novel shine. The time period is also well drawn. It is the time of Jim Crow in the US, and the US military was in England. Though the RAF was integrated, the English general population was not. Also in the novel is the best depiction I have read of how the Blitz affected the civilian population.

This novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2004. This award has since become the Women's Prize for Fiction. I have come to think too many of the books for those awards have an agenda, so much so that I rarely even give them a first look, let alone a second one. I'll not deny that Small Island has an agenda. As I say above, I winced more than once. The blatant and unapologetic racism is hard to take. That is the story that Andrea Levy has to tell. I don't know how much of this is her own family story, but I suspect that this is a good reflection of Jamaican immigration in 1948.

This is one of the best novels I've read of late and a full 5-stars. Andrea Levy died too young. All we have are her six novels and a collection of stories. It looks as if they all come from the same well of stories about Jamaica and immigration. I hope to find myself in front of one (or maybe two) others. ...more

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Aug 21, 2009 Juniper marked it as dnf · review of another edition

Shelves: in-person-book-club, womens-prize-winners

The book group I belong to did this book 2 years and I could not get into it at all. I thought, since everyone loved it and I have heard many people rave about it since, I would try again. Well try again I did with the same result - I was left wondering what the big deal was about this book. I found it monotonous and a chore.

edited to add:

i have now tried this book 3 times. i have read about ¾ of this novel, but it just had done nothing for me. i gave the book away, so doubt i will try it again.

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