malabar
Homo Malabarus
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 673
Location: Bristol, UK
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 Posted: Thu Jan 18, 2007 6:40 am Post subject: 17. Small Island, Andrea Levy |
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From http://www.smallislandread.com:
| Quote: | Small Island Read 2007 is the biggest mass-reading initiative that has ever taken place in Britain. It brings together the pre-existing annual reading projects The Great Reading Adventure (Bristol and the South West) and Liverpool Reads, and partners from Aye Write! Bank of Scotland Book Festival in Glasgow and Hull Libraries.
Everyone in the areas covered by the project is being encouraged to read Andrea Levy’s award-winning novel Small Island.
2007 marks the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Slave Trade Abolition Bill and Small Island Read 2007 is part of a wider national initiative commemorating the ending of the trade and exploring slavery’s continuing influence upon multicultural Britain. |
There was a Reader's Guide and everything. Haven't looked at the guide yet because I'm sure it would have spoilers.
This is the story of four people in Britain in 1948: Hortense, a young Jamaican teacher; Gilbert, the ex-RAF Jamaican man she married specifically so that he would take her to Britain with him; Queenie, a British butcher's daughter, now turned landlady; and Bernard, Queenie's husband. While Bernard is away serving with the RAF in India, Queenie takes in lodgers to make ends meet - Gilbert and his friends. This scandalises the neighbours, but Queenie is ready to stand up for them and for herself.
For his part, Gilbert can't understand how the British can treat him so poorly when he helped defend their country in the war. He would like to study law, but is offered only training in baking bread. Hortense, for her part, expected much more from the Mother Country and blames Gilbert for building her hopes up.
The book captured my interest and I got through it with little effort. I'm curious to see how it would go over in the US, where interracial relations are even more fraught with difficulty than they are in the UK. It certainly wouldn't be recommended to kids, as there is a fair amount of sex going on, though not super-explicit. |
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