Small Island by Andrea Levy

  I'm going to start this blog off with a couple of books that I have just read. Another thing you should probably know about me is that I am a fan of starting 'to do' lists etc. with a couple of bits I have already done for morale's sake... Its just one of my many quirks.
  The day before yesterday I finished reading a beautiful novel called Small Island by Andrea Levy.  The story takes place in Britain, Jamaica and India during and a couple of years after the Second World War. It follows two couples whose lives become entwined, Queenie and Bernard Bligh, an English couple living in London, and Hortense and Gilbert Joseph, a couple from Jamaica.  It brings special focus onto life in Britain at a time of great cultural change. 
  One of the truly special things about this book, I found, was in the fact that Levy gives each of these characters a voice. Each of these four character becomes a narrator at some point in the story, and so the novel is given a multi-dimensional feel that is so often missing.  Each character is presented with their own strengths and foibles, and although we are not asked to agree with any of the characters, their actions and beliefs are dealt with sensitively.  It was refreshing to read a novel that didn't ask me to ally myself with a particular character, or to feel particular emotions. Levy presents the characters in a very human way, we are not meant to think for instance Gilbert= Good or Bernard= Bad. It is a novel that is free from the labels people tend to attach to one another. Bernard, for example, goes off to India to fight in the war and comes back with racist views and yet the novel does not refer to him as a racist. Rather, he is presented as an individual that has a set of beliefs that not everybody agrees with yet one is able to understand how he came by them. Also, Queenie she is presented as someone who is simultaneously generous and selfish.  She is not the definitive heroine. Neither is Hortense for that matter, with her snooty demeanour and seemingly unfaltering pride. Small Island is a novel that is first and foremost about people and they way they act and feel in completely life altering situations, irrespective of colour, gender or nationality.
  I first picked up Small Island because I remembered that there was a BBC production of it a couple of years ago that I enjoyed.  Normally, I don't like to read novels if I have already seen them on the telly or in film. However, I felt compelled to pick it up and I can honestly say that I am so glad I did.  I studied the Decolonization of the British Empire as part of my A-Level in History, and I found that this novel gave a truly interesting perspective (or four perspectives) on colonization.  I found it intriguing that 'the Mother Country' aka Britain did not always live up to the expectations of those living in the colonies. One of my favourite bits is when Gilbert, speaking of Britain, says:

" Living far from you is a beloved relation whom you have never met.  Yet this relation is so dear to you she is known as Mother....Her photographs are cherished...Your finest, your best, everything you have that is worthy is sent to Mother...
  Then one day you hear Mother calling-she is troubled, she need your help...Shiver, tire, hunger-for no sacrifice is too much to see you at Mother's needy side.
  The filthy tramp that eventually greets you is she. Ragged, old, dusty as the long dead...
  She looks down at you through lordly eyes and says, 'Who the bloody hell are you?'"

  I found it fascinating to consider that in spite of being so proud of the British Empire, only too happy to drain the colonies dry, very few in Britain could tell you very much about it. I couldn't help wondering what the point of the Empire was after all. What this novel illustrates very well, however, is the point that our colonial heritage and the Second World War has turned Britain into the country it is today; a wonderful melting pot brimming with cultural diversity.