Details Books In Favor Of Small Island
| Original Title: | Small Island |
| ISBN: | 0312424671 (ISBN13: 9780312424671) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Setting: | London, England(United Kingdom) British Empire,1948 |
| Literary Awards: | Orange Prize for Fiction (2004), Whitbread Award for Novel and Book of the Year (2004), Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book Overall (2005) |
Andrea Levy
Paperback | Pages: 441 pages Rating: 3.95 | 25813 Users | 1612 Reviews
Describe Appertaining To Books Small Island
| Title | : | Small Island |
| Author | : | Andrea Levy |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Deluxe Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 441 pages |
| Published | : | April 1st 2005 by Picador USA (first published 2004) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction |
Interpretation Conducive To Books Small Island
Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of the immigrant's life.
Rating Appertaining To Books Small Island
Ratings: 3.95 From 25813 Users | 1612 ReviewsJudgment Appertaining To Books Small Island
Books like this are why I study English literature at university, books like this are why I read so ferociously. Ferocious reading? Now thats an interesting image. But, honestly, Im careful when I read. I wouldnt want to scratch those pages! But, Im digressing here. This book is an eye-opener; it is an excellent teacher of part of English cultural history. Could you imagine fighting for a country not your own, and then being treated by the citizens of that country like dirt? Those you ended upEven if the storyline was a little naive sometimes I have to give this book five starts because it was beautiful and I couldn't put it down.
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 and she said
[4.5] Middlebrow fiction as it should be done: entertaining, readable but not without substance; a book you still look forward to picking up when you're using most of your spare time for things other than reading. Levy makes this kind of writing look easy, but there must be a lot of paddling going on under the surface to make the novel glide so smoothly. No surprise that this was made into a BBC drama - it certainly has that Sunday evening TV feel: characters are entirely believeable as
What happens when young Jamaican men join the war effort for Britain against Germany? The Jamaicans are educated and consider themselves part of the British empire and children of the mother country of England. Unfortunately the people of England doesn't seem to recognize the Jamaicans; they don't know where Jamaica is and to them Jamaicans are just black people, inferior to white. Prejudice, alive and well in 1948 Britain.In this story we follow Gilbert and Hortense, a Jamaican couple; and
The current Windrush scandal / national embarrassment caused me to revisit my review of this book - as the Windrush is crucial to the plot and the author's own parents sailed to England on the Windrush in 1948.Multi-narrator story which also moves between the past of the various characters and a present narrative in 1948 that brings them all together about:Gilbert Joseph a Jamaican who joins the RAF, but finds himself restricted to being a driver. In Jamaica he raises funds from Hortense to
This historical novel took me a mighty long time to read, and the delay was not because Small Island was deadly boring or badly written. I liked this book, but at the same time I have mixed feelings about the characters. Maybe they were a little too "ordinary" for my tastes, OR perhaps since I focus much of my reading on works and characters set in Africa and the Middle East, maybe they were a little too Western for me. Still despite my mixed feelings I loved this novel's optimism and humor.
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