A couple of posts ago, I talked about the author’s voice, the prism through which all of their stories are told. In that case, (Yellowface), it wasn’t my cup of tea but Andrea Levy’s voice is one of the things I loved most in Small Island.
Jamaica is the ‘small island’ of the title that was still part of the British empire at the time of the story shortly after WW2. The complicated love-hate relationship that Jamaicans had with Britain is well depicted and one I found it particularly interesting in light of our own contentious (less love-more hate) relationship with Britain over the years of domination.
Gilbert is an optimistic, funny, charming but somewhat feckless Jamaican man who joins the British army to fight in the war but when he decides to stay in London, the antagonism and casual racism he encounters (often from people who pride themselves of their open-mindedness when compared with the Americans) is shocking. Hortense, his wife, who joins him is my favourite character. She is a difficult, demanding woman who cannot understand why the Mother Country that she has revered from afar doesn’t welcome her with open arms. Queenie is alone in a big dilapidated house after her husband fails to return from the war and rents a room to Gilbert and Hortense, despite the objections of her neighbours. Bernard, her deeply racist husband, returns from the war to find black people living in his house.
All of the characters have serious flaws but through Andrea Levy’s prism, they are seen with clear-sighted compassion, even Bernard, who is much harder to redeem. So too is her evenhanded view of post-war Britain. The author comes across as funny, kind and fair. It was a pleasure to see the story and characters through her filtering lens.
Small Island was published in 2004, the year that Andrea Levy found out that she had metastatic breast cancer. She died in 2019. A very sad loss.
Comments ()