Books
Andrea Levy clearly has a strong attachment to her roots.
Born in London in 1956 to Jamaican parents, each of her previous three books have explored the relationship between the Jamaican immigrant community and wider British society at various stages throughout the twentieth century.
Following the principle of not fixing what ain't broke her latest offering, Small Island, is another examination of this often uneasy relationship, this time looking at the formative years immediately following World War II.
The novel focuses on three main characters: Queenie Bligh, Gilbert Joseph and his wife Hortense.
When Queenie agrees, in 1948, to take in Jamaican lodgers her neighbours do not approve, but her husband, Bernard, has not come home from the war, and it is looking increasingly like he might not.
Given the loss of his income Queenie is obliged to take in lodgers in order to maintain her household and can't be choosy. Meanwhile Gilbert, one of thousands of Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against the axis powers, has returned to England only to find that an air of narrow-minded racism has developed and that civilian life is by no means a bed of roses.
Finally there's Hortense, who always dreamed of starting a better life in England with her husband. Following her emigration however, she is shocked to find that London is dilapidated and dispirited, hardly the city of her dreams. Worse yet, she quickly begins to discover that her husband is not the man she thought he was and that her marriage may not be as solid as she believed.
The three narratives, all written in the third person and each of which is convincingly distinctive, interweave pleasingly to form a framework that is not so complex as to be off-putting yet not so simple as to become boring.
The major downfall of Small Island is that it neither opens nor covers new ground.
As anyone who studied English at any stage will tell you, contemporary literature on the subject of war and post-war society is by no means an under-represented genre.
The issues raised about race relations and the importance of tolerance are indeed important but unless an author writes exceedingly well, the repetition of a point ad nauseam can only diminish its impact. Levy's style has been used in similar works before as well, Sebastian Faulks' Birdsong made use of the interweaving narrative streams on display here in 1997 and since its critically acclaimed release this has been a fairly standard template.
All of that having been said, Levy is careful not to allow her novel to become an also-ran.
Ultimately when a book takes its plot from a commonly used and abused template it must be saved by the strength of the writing and the appeal of the characters.
Thankfully Andrea Levy delivers on both counts, creating a loveable and believable cast of characters who are the subject of some of the most delicate and well-wrought writing of the last year.
It's not an overstatement to say that these are some of the most involving, memorable and believable characters outside of Dickens.
Certainly the skill with which Small Island is written transcends its tired subject matter to make the whole an enjoyable and interesting read.
A significant element of Levy's agenda seems to be concerned with a covert assessment of modern culture. This eventually culminates in a realised potency.
As the novel progresses you feel by turns shocked and guilty as you compare the plight of immigrant groups in a fractious post-war environment to the hardly dissimilar plight of, say, asylum seekers half way through the first decade of a new millennium and realise that we really haven't moved anywhere near far enough.
All in all Small Island is a well-handled and lovingly crafted novel dealing with the birth pains of post-war society and the miseries attendant on immigration. The action, while not being especially original or exciting, is well paced and competently handled. This is definitely one to remember for the vacation; deserving all the praise it gets.
Small Island was the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004 and, as was recently announced, the Whitbread award for best novel. After winning this category already, Small Island is also up for the overall Whitbread Book of the Year competition, and is currently the favourite.
The decision of the distinguished panel of judges will be announced on January 25th.
20th Jan 2005