Small Island : Andrea Levy

                                           Image Credit : JamaicaTravel&Culture
This will be my last review on this blog before I embark on a long-overdue, much-needed vacation. Trying to go on vacation itself has been so stressful I wonder if Laos will really be the panacea I am hoping it would be. A book will come along with me, of course, but before Laos, I went to Jamaica and England. Through Andrea Levy's marvelously readable Small Island. I had started reading this book last year, then found the story a bit dragging and had abandoned it. I picked it up again. Small Island just had too many rave reviews going for it, and I know how a mood can change a book, so I gave it a second coming.

The result was that I had to re-read 195 pages all over again as I had almost completely forgotten the story. I am glad I did. Andrea Levy is a masterful storyteller - I was gasping in awe at her skill with words. Who else can write in the voice of a Jamaican man, a Jamaican woman, a British woman, and a British man? And not make the reader feel like any is out of place? Only a special talent can speak so many voices so well. Small Island is told through the voices of Gilbert Joseph, a Jamaican trying to make his way in post-1940s London, Hortense, his wife, a fellow Jamaican, Queenie, a white Englishwoman and her husband, Bernard. At the heart of it, Levy tries to portray the extreme racism prevalent in the London of those times - darkie, nigger,  coon, coolie - were pretty common words, and the difficulties that immigrants faced in hostile society. Lingering in the backdrop but becoming a major part of it is World War II. Both Gilbert and Bernard serve in that great War and it has contrasting effects on both of them. And lest I forget, Small Island is also a love story. Not an overt Nicholas Sparks love story, but a gentle, touching rendering of love as most people know it - not a Bollywood version of it.

There were complex issues at stake here - but one of the most important themes to emerge from the novel was the relationship between Britain and her colonies. Or rather, former colonies. I found myself chuckling over many of the passages in the book that amplified this relationship. And it is so true - we studied more about British history, geography, and its culture than we did our own. As Gilbert wonders in the novel, every student in Jamaica could point out Britain on a map with his eyes closed. But ask an Englishman where Jamaica is? "Jamaica? Oh, isn't that in Africa?". Of all the characters, I think I found Bernard the most boring. It was his narrative that I was not really interested in. And the Japs in India? I am not sure but apart from Kohima and Imphal, the War did not penetrate the consciousness of most Indians then, although as subjects of Her Majesty, Indians were fighting alongside the British against the Japanese. But well, Andrea Levy must have done her research well, so it is just my memory at fault, perhaps.

I have one genuine grouse though - the ending! I wished that Hortense would know whose baby it was! It seemed unfair to the reader to be left wondering! In the end, Small Island is a wonderful read. Truly deserved all the awards it won.

Verdict : A brilliant artist at work. 


Rating: 4/5

Small Island was made into a BBC series, the preview of which you can watch here: