Books of the Month

'Small Island' by Andrea Levy

The multi-award-winning Small Island is the story of two couples: Gilbert and Hortense who come from Jamaica to live in post-war Britain, and Queenie and Bernard, who (willingly and unwillingly) end up putting them up in their London house. Told in sections through each of their voices, the book builds into a picture of two very different worlds and examines how expectations are formed and disappointed, and highlights a far from multi-cultural Brittain.

Gilbert volunteers for the British RAF during the war, and while stationed in the UK meets Queenie and her father-in-law. When he returnes to Jamaica and announces his plans to move to Britain permanently, ambitious trainee teacher Hortense senses a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve her lot, and loans him the money for his passage in return for a ticket herself - as his wife. But Gilbert soon finds that struggling Britain is a very different place, and that he's regarded very differently now that he's no longer in uniform. He manages to get lodgings with his old friend Queenie, who's husband Bernard has 'got lost' on the way back from service in Burma. Queenie braves the disapproval of her neighbours by taking in Caribbean lodgers struggling to find rooms elsewhere. But when Hortense arrives a few months later, she finds the tiny room she's forced to share with her husband, the poor conditions and the strange way people treat her, are all a far cry from what she was expecting. Eventually Bernard finds his way back home, and is dismayed to find his home full of 'coloureds'. Things come to a head when his wife gives birth - to a black child.

Andrea Levy builds a convincing portrait of post-war Britain which highlights the lives of the often forgotten numbers of black people arriving from the Caribbean. Her characters are engaging - Levy has admitted herself that the hapless but kind-hearted Gilbert is her favourite - and the narrative is often humorous enough to get you laughing out loud. The book's already proving popular with reading groups around the world, and the award of both the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread Prize have deservedly brought it to a much wider audience.

Susan Tranter

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