Book Swap reviews: Small Island by Andrea Levy

[FrannyandZooey]

Well, blimey. This was a great book. I am really grateful to Bumbleweed for sending this one to me; it was a perfect book to start with, just the sort of thing I feel I should be reading but usually pass by at the bookshop in favour of something lighter.

At the beginning, I did not like the format of the book because the story was told by 4 different chracters, and dotted backwards and forwards between the different relevant periods of the story. I thought I was going to find this hard work (the last book I read in this style was The Time Traveller's Wife ) and at first I did have to pay closer attention than I am used to with the sort of lazy books I choose. However the 4 characters each have a very distinct voice, and the plot is riveting, so this device did not get in the way for long. I was easily carried along by the story.

I particularly liked the characters, especially Hortense who amused me and endeared herself to me very much indeed. I liked the writer's ability to put us into the shoes of both Jamaican and British characters. I also learnt a lot about this period in British history of which I was ignorant before.

I was not totally sure about:

the sex bits - one scene seemed a bit contrived with the descriptions of "zebra limbs" or something. There was a bit too much made of the fact one partner was white and one black.

The ending. It didn't feel totally satisfying to me, how things worked out. I suppose it was a realistic scenario, but it somehow didn't seem it. Possibly this was just because I wanted things to work out differently. I also hadn't spotted the fact that two of the characters were the same person , ie that the Michael that Hortense knew, and the Michael that Queenie knew, were the same person, which was a bit dim of me. I do have a habit of missing things like this when I am reading; I just sort of swallow the story whole and only digest it afterwards. However it could maybe have meant the ending seemed more fitting, if I had realised the connection previously.

Sorry, I seem to have written rather a lot! I am really glad to have read this wonderful book, and hope the other book swappers enjoy it as much as I did. I will probably come back and add more things later as they occur to me; as I say, I tend to swallow a book whole and then slowly unravel it over the following weeks :)

I am really glad you enjoyed it FandZ.

I liked it for some of the same reasons as you - I found the characters so interesting, believable, well-rounded and likeable. I was also fascinated by the insight into the historical/cultural setting - wartime Britain and Jamaicans emigrating to this country after the war.

However, I loved the different narrative voices from the outset, and the 'link' through Michael .

I cant remember enough of the detail now to say anything else interesting.

bump

WOW!!

LOVED this book, really didnt want it to end!

Loved the way the characters told their seperate stories, the way the author weaved a beautiful story about an ugly subject.
Didnt like Queenies husband or Hortenese at the begining, but as they told their own stories, they grew on me

I disagree with you Franny about the sex scenes, as race was such a massive issue, I think the fact they had sex would be shocking and the author reflected this in her descriptions. If we were watching it, we would notice the colours of the limbs, and maybe even compare it as she did to a zebra, so I think she was write to use that image

The ending was a bit pants, would have prefered Hortenese to realise that the Michael Queenie was involved with is the same one as her brother.

Apart from that though, I loved loved loved it

But how could Hortense realise that when I didn't even realise it Boris?

Ye-es, maybe you are right about the sex scenes. Maybe. I find though, if a sex scene is really well written, I am not conscious of the language or choice of images, I am just lost in it. I got that squirmy self-conscious feeling about this one, though.

Just skimming the book club section when I saw this title. I've not read it, but I've been wanting a copy for ages. I haven't read what you have written in case anyone says what happens, but it has been recommended to me as something I will 'love' and can't seem to get it on Amazon. Has anyone got a copy they will sell to me?

I actually liked the swapping between characters and really enjoyed this book!

I enjoyed this too. Well-written and easy to read, even if the subject matter by its very nature is a difficult one. Some of the attitudes of the white characters towards the black immigrants was very difficult to stomach.

I liked the device of moving between characters and between times too; it gives the scope for more insight into each character than a single narrator would, and I felt that it made the characters more real and believable to me.

I didn't like Hortense's character at all to start with, I warmed to her as she told her story though. Gilbert was written with much more warmth and felt much more human to me.

I agree that the ending was a bit unsatisfactory; maybe it was a realistic ending for Queenie and Bernard, given the attitudes towards black people at the time, but for Hortense and Gilbert it felt a bit too fairy-tale. It didn't fit quite right with me, was just a bit too neat, and it felt a bit like strolling off into the sunset for a "happy ever after"; I felt that wasn't what the book had set up, and really wasn't very realistic given racial attitudes at the time.

i have just started reading this book, and i'm not enjoying the bits by gilbert - i wish he'd stop waffling on & just tell me what happened. i will persevere with this, although i suspect i've just worked out the rest of the book from what you have all written (well, some of it i thought about already)

enjoyed this book more once i got past gilbert's final piece. sll of the characters are well rounded, believable people - not too nice, but not horrible either. i've been using excerpts as examples of how writing style influences the 'voice' of narration with some of my rbighter classes in school.

I loved this book - F&Z has expressed very well most of what I thought about it.
The ending didn't work for me at all.
It didn't seem in keeping with Queenie's character: having been such a fighter through the rest of the book she suddenly seemed to be giving up, and I couldn't believe she would do that over the matter of her child of all things. I'm also not sure Hortense would have been up for it as surely it could have interfered with so many of her dreams and ambitions.

However unlike some other people here I did like the fact that she didn't realise it was the same Michael - it stopped it from being too 'all ends neatly tied up' and I liked imagining that at some point later in their lives they might have found out.