I found this June 2004 transcript of a Washington Post on-line discussion with Andrea Levy where she discusses why she wrote the book.

Here is a link that might be useful: Andrea Levy Transcript

Interesting question, Martin... to me, Queenie, though flawed, would have to be the 'hero' because of her monumentally unselfish and appropriate decision to give up her child. However, my personal favourite is Gilbert for the sweetness and tolerance he shows Hortense in spite of her arrogance.

Generally, I loved this book, found all the characters deeply believable and engaging. The Michael Roberts coincidence didn't bother me - strange things do happen. It's a while since I read the novel, but I am quite sure that Hortense had no idea that Roberts was the baby's father.

Levy's style is beautiful; I loved the description of Queenie's father-in-law as a 'human apostrophe', and the episode where Gilbert, freshly arrived in Britain, thinks he has found a glittering green brooch which turns out to be a dog turd covered in flies...

At first I thought that the structure of the book, back and forth between : before and 1948 , and the often leaps from a character to another one point of view, would have been too much confusing for my weak mind, bur after a few chapters I got used to it, and I think is a good way to tell a story.
Who was the hero of the story? I haven't the faintest idea. But was struck me it was that, even if the book is filled with humor, warmth and humanity, like cindydavid4 says, the book is about integration , but also about suffering and loss. I mean all of them lose something.
Hortense and Gilbert lose their place in the society, because Jamaica and England are way out different. Queenie for a few days is able to grabs what the true love can be, but she loses it. Bernard thinks to have lost is dignity of white man; and all these losses are due by society structure , not by single people will. Hortense can't teach in London because she's black, for the same reason Bernard can't exploit his brilliant mind, Queenie can't keep her black baby and Bernard can't even imagine how Queenie can have done what she had done.
But at the end of the book there is a hint of hope, about the fact how sometimes life can give you a new opportunity if you are able to see it; like in the movie "Castaway" when Tom Hanks talks with a friend of him , about the fact that when he felt herself hopeless on the island, the wind and the sea brought him a sail.

now in add to what frances-md has found I try to translate a few excerpt from something I found in a magazine here in Italy:
Sono cresciuta con un costante senso di vergogna per il fatto che la mia famiglia venisse dalla Giamaica", confessa la Levy. "Inoltre io ho un cognome ebraico, perché la famiglia di mio padre è di discendenza ebraica, e ciò mi ha reso la vita ancora più complicata. I nostri genitori desideravano che ci comportassimo come tutti gli altri, senza farci notare, muovendoci per così dire in sottotono e cercando di essere il più possibile invisibili. Noi Levy siamo di pelle assai chiara - appena una sfumatura di differenza - e l'idea quindi era quella di fingere di essere come gli altri, in modo che nessuno notasse. Io non c'ero mai stata, in Giamaica, e tutto ciò che riguardava la Giamaica mi risultava terribilmente imbarazzante. Quanto al colore della pelle, la parola black, nero, non veniva mai pronunciata: e mia madre a tutt'oggi non ne vuol sapere, non la può neppur sentire."

I grew up feeling myself ashamed about the fact my parents were Jamaican origin and moved to England after war. Moreover I've got a Jew last name, because my father comes of Ebrew kin, and this fact complicated my life a great deal more. Our parents wanted that our behaviour was similar to the one of anyone else, trying to be the most invisible we could.
We Levy have our skin quite light , there's just a nuance of difference, so the general idea was to pretend we were like everybody...

I found I liked this book more than I expected to, especially the parts set in Jamaica.

I enjoyed the character of Hortense. What a Little Miss Nose in Air with her claims to an important Father and illusions of grandeur. I loved the bit where she arrives at Gilbert's home and asks Queenie "Is this perchance where he is aboding?"
I feel when we see Gilbert through her eyes we see him as something of a clown, a bumpkin. I'm sure she never thinks what their life will be like when she follows him to London.
Maybe Levy made Hortense unpleasent so, when she arrived in England and found it in no way lived up to her expectations she had much further to fall.
I couldn't quite see the point of the story of Queenie's early life. Why, when she was 'taken in hand' by the Aunt was is necessary for her to have elocution and deportment lessons when she was just going to be working behind the counter in a sweet shop? I felt her character came more 'alive' once she was able to be of some use during the Blitz.
Regarding the Jamaican RAF men and their clashes with the US military. I imagine these things actually happened. I think many people today don't realise that until WWII probably the majority of English people had never seen a black man and certainly never spoken to one, so inviting them into their homes must have been a big step.
I hadn't known that the US forces in the Midlands segregated the towns in which their troops could go on leave. So the whites went to Newark while the blacks had to go to Nottingham. Maybe this is why, some time ago, an elderly friend who had served in the War in the BFPO in Nottingham told me in horror how, while cycling to duty early one morning she saw dozens of 'bad' white girls escorted by black US soldiers emerging from a night of passion spent in old city buildings!
I think Levy did a convincing job with the character of Bernard, he seems very typical of the rather cold, repressed English man, who's only moment of importance came once they were in uniform. I did feel the scene with the Indian prossy was totally out of character.
Gilbert, without Hortense, came over as the most likeable character. He manages to keep his temper when being insulted
by fellow workers, he puts up with the dreadful Hortense and he makes the most of his time in the RAF although he never get the chance to be more than 'ground crew'.
I didn't feel there was any 'coincidence' with the Michael Roberts thing. He (or his image) is there throughout the story and one can only hope that Hortense and Gilbert (who she is calling a buffoon right to the end) can make a life together with the baby.
I think Levy managed the Post War 'period' very well, although she is way too young to remember it . . .the dullness everywhere, the lack of choice of anything the drab clothes, the boring meals, everybody moaning all the time about how things were better before the War!
A small detail. Someone should have told her about Ration Books. Hortense would...

What surprised me about the book was that I learned to like each character almost equally. I was prepared to quite dislike Bernard--until I read his section of the story. I really sympathized with every one of them, but I guess Queenie was my favorite with Gilbert second and that also surprised me.

I grew up in a rural area where there were almost no black people and so didn't know anything about prejudice until I was older. It is a great embarrassment to me to know that whole categories of people were (and maybe still are to some extent) treated so badly in the U.S. Reading James Michener's Centennial opened my eyes to the treatment of the Indians, and then we took a driving trip out West and I got my first look at New Mexico where there are a number of Indian reservations. How could we?

Small Island was a good book, and again I must thank you all at RP for further expanding my horizons.

Gilbert was the hero in my book. I was delighted with this novel. Yes, I suppose it is about immigration and the black experience in a white society, but even more this is a book about identity. I appreciated the way we saw people as they saw themselves, how they appeared to others, how they changed with adversity, and that we got a glimpse of who they may really be.

I liked Hortense as she saw herself. I didn't like the Hortense that others saw. I liked her again as she adjusted to life as an immigrant. We all have a view of who we are and where we fit in society. WWII, particularly for men, but also for the women left behind, upset those views. Doesn't Levy mention that this was when the class system in England starts to disintegrate? (Or am I thinking of WWI?)

Queenie struggled to be a good person. She remained reasonably true to the view she had of herself. So how incredibly hard it must have been for her to dig down into the bottom of her soul and realize she wasn't up to raising a black child. We saw truly who she was for that brief moment. I do not condemn her. I just point that out as an instance of who we think we are is not always who we really are. She was forced to face that fact. While Hortense never really did. Hortense certainly grew with her experience, but never really seemed to recognize that her self-image wasn't true.

The men, too, turned out to be quite different from how the women in their lives saw them. Gilbert had a good handle on who he was and how the world saw him. Still, he managed to hold onto his sense of self and to continue to struggle to be the man he wanted to be.

Hortense's sense of self was based on who she was and what she had - or wanted to have. Rather like pre-modern society. Gerald's sense of self was based more on knowing that he was smart and capable (not always the same thing) and on his determination to do better for himself. He embodies the modern take on life. Queenie and Bernard I saw as struggling to adjust to this upheaval , trying to find their place in this changed and not so comfortable world.

I just liked being reminded that we so seldom know ourselves, much less the others in our lives.

Some of my own thoughts now.

I felt, like a lot of you, that Queenie was the hero of the story - but I had a very soft spot for Hortense. Silly silly woman, but showing signs, at last, of growing up. I felt optimistic about her and Gilbert, because (a) despite everything, Gilbert and she didn't seem to consider any alternative than to staying married and (b) in that last impassioned speech that Gilbert gave to Bernard, Hortense finally realized there was someone to respect there. (And didn't it hurt when Bernard said "I'm sorry, but I didn't understand a word you were saying"?)

I tried to ignore the Michael Roberts coincidence, but.... It could have been any father - why on earth should it be Michael Roberts? (Apart from the fact he looked like Gilbert, which is why Queenie's father-in-law brought him home.)

I thought the acceptance of the Jim Crow in the US army was the thing that shocked me the most - the unthinking assumption that it's better for all to keep the races segregated. I felt that there was very little sympathy for the US army in the book - there didn't seem to be a single slightly intelligent white person serving in the US army at all.

My father, who died in 2001, used to make reference to "our coloured brethren" even in his last years. Habit, I guess; but every time the phrase turned up in the book, it reminded me, and made me cringe slightly for him.

My mother has read the book; she was born in about 1935, so she would have been 13 when the book was mainly set; she lived in West London after the war. She said that the book made her feel quite ashamed. Which I thought was as good an advertisement for the book as I have ever heard.

A brilliant achievement. Why, oh why, was it not even long-listed for the Booker???

grelobe, don't worry about your grammar, you do fine. I am embarrassed that I speak only one language fluently (tho I am working at my Spanish!). Good for you to be able to handle two at once!

>Bernard thinks to have lost is dignity of white man; and all these losses are due by society structure , not by single people will. Hortense can't teach in London because she's black, for the same reason Bernard can't exploit his brilliant mind, Queenie can't keep her black baby and Bernard can't even imagine how Queenie can have done what she had done.

Mmm- I am not sure what you mean here. Why can't Bernard exploit his mind?

Did anyone have else have trouble with the Bernard story? Whats funny, is that I was looking forward to it. I wanted to know about this man, what he was made of. But I so disliked the man that I found myself skimming towards the end of it. Tho the part where he thinks he has syphillis for what, two years, had me laughing - but in a different way then at Hortense walking into a closet.

>I couldn't quite see the point of the story of Queenie's early life.

veer, I think the point was to show that Queenie had different experiences that perhaps many of her peers didn't have. And it seemed as if her parents encouraged the inquisitiveness. As for the aunt and upbringing - the aunt wanted her to marry good so that she (the aunt) would have status. I don't think she really cared a think for Queenie. Plus, showing Queenies early life could be compared with Gilbert's and Hortense's.

>How could we?

We still do, unfortunately. Life for many Amer Indians have not improved much in the last 50 years. And the discrimiation of Hispanics by those in the SW is incredible, considering they were indeed here long before the English.

martin, interesting comments from your mom. The Jim Crow stuff I pretty much knew, but even reading it again made me ill.

Who is the hero? Queenie, Gilbert and Hortense - all of them. Nothing good would have happened without the heart and compassion that the each had. Together, they made something hopeful. Tho I felt bad for Queenie - what happens now? Is she stuck with Bernard forever?

One last thing - usually I can't read books with dialect - it drives me crazy trying to parse the words and it slows down my reading. But in the hands of a good writer, it works. Twain was one. Levy is another.

martin and frances, thanks for those links. I'll add more once I read them.

It is a very long time since I read this book, but like all of you, I loved it.

I remember feeling a lot of compassion for the Jamaicans when they realised that the 'England' they had thought of as home, knew nothing about them. For many years, certainly into the 1960s, Australians talked about 'going home' when they were going to England, and certainly we studied the UK in depth at school.

The racism was an eye-opener for me, not so much from the British, who I felt were more astounded by the difference of these people to themselves and only secondly interested in the colour of their skin, but more the US Army personnel.

I think my hero was also Queenie. As Larry mentioned, she was a contradictory character, but all the more real for that.

>Bernard thinks to have lost is dignity of white man; and all these losses are due by society structure , not by single people will. Hortense can't teach in London because she's black, for the same reason Bernard can't exploit his brilliant mind, Queenie can't keep her black baby and Bernard can't even imagine how Queenie can have done what she had done.

Mmm- I am not sure what you mean here. Why can't Bernard exploit his mind?

for cindydavid4

I meant he couldn't exploit his brillant mind and his optimistic and vigorous attitude because of his color skin he was confined to do menial work

grelobe

I think we're mixing a Bernard and Gilbert here, aren't we?

I suspect so - substituting Gilbert's name makes sense.

BTW, please call me Cindy. I had to use the above moniker because every other one I tried was rejected by the powers that be on this site. So I used an old email tag. But just call me Cindy.

I seem to have a different view of Hortense than most. Yes, she was uppity, but then so were many of her class (including white girls in that other island). And she had to be shocked by the situation she was in when she came to London. She wasn't prepared for it, and it took her a long time to adjust. But think about first her age - she was young, and had much growing up to do with or without this adjustment. Remember too that she married a man who she knew very briefly. She had no idea what to expect, and no idea how to work with him. She wanted to please him but didn't know how. She tried cleaning the little room, tried learning how to make chips. But he was so frustrated by what life was handing him at that time, he couldn't see it.

The fact that she had enough self motivation to work and try, the fact that she learned how to adjust, the fact that she started to become a partner with Gilbert and a friend to Queenin - all showed me that she had more heart and guts than some might give her credit for. Really - she could have just walked out of that horrid little room and taken the next boat back home. She didn't.

Tho I do think you all are right - Queenie is the hero, for all good things started with her, and ended with her.

Re Bernard. Of all Levy's characters this is the one which drifts closest to cliche. The buttoned up middle class white man; repressed, diffident, useless in the sack, desperate to maintain an illusory perceived status and doomed by the slow avalanche of history and social change. All of Levy's small heroes are the victims of change and are destined to be reshaped by forces they barely comprehend but you get the sense that Levy presents Bernard as the one least likely to cope because he embodies, as a character, all the comfortable smugness, insularity and sense of superiority that she finds England guilty of in the pre-war years.
Still in the end I quite liked Bernard. Perhaps because he is a little broadly drawn he is the easiest charcater to slip into - like a pair of his own slippers. Or even perhaps just because I am a white man brought up in my own "small (well very large) island" Australia to believe in the concepts of England that Bernard deperately wants to cling to. We in Australia really had no idea of the forces reshaping England, any more than Hortense and Gilbert had in Jamaica. We were an outpost of empire and still clung to ideas of England 30 or 40 years out of date. I remember as a child well into the sixties still celebrating with a night of fireworks "Empire Day". Despite all the smugness, racism and expoiltative malevolance that idea has today it had a certain innocent quality, locked up as it was in a totally misconcieved idea of the permanence and rightness of England's place in the world.
I guess Levy is suggesting we all inhabit small islands of geography, history, society, environment and personality. For most of us historical change happens with all the glacial pace of continental drift but sometimes something as cataclysmic as a world war reshapes our world into something so totally different that all our previous ideas of what and who we are become somewhat redundant. This is what confronts Gilbert, Hortense, Queenie and Bernard behind the obvious and poisonous face of racist attitude and stereotyping.

BTW I feel a little sorry for the Yanks in this story. Levy is the least kind and understanding to them of all her characters. These youngsters who fought and died to save the skins of many nations they barely knew existed before enlistment came from their own "small islands" of innocent ignorance. Not attempting to justify their racism even in the smallest sense but Levy offers up little more than caricature of a nation whose sacrifice saved western society. Unfortunately the fate of most saviours is the flourishing of resentment amongst those saved.
In Australia there was "The Battle of Brisbane" where a trainload of Aussie troops fought a pitched battle with a trainload of US troops. The cause? Resentment amongst us Aussies that our women were a little too eager to express their gratitude to these exotic Yanks. In male minds probably a totally justifiable reason for dissension amongst allies. Larry

Larry, We are so frequently bashed that it no longer makes much of an impression. Besides, I'm sure there were some pretty nasty G.I.s and expect they would linger longer in the memory than the regular guys. Plus, I think Levy an equal opportunity basher. Certainly didn't let it affect my enjoyment of this very fine novel.

>I'm sure there were some pretty nasty G.I.s and expect they would linger longer in the memory than the regular guys.

Yep - for some reason we humans tend to remember the 'slings and arrows' that comes from other humans, but put in the background times when people showed humanity. Its too bad - we'd probably less cynical and happier if it were the opposite. But then- they make for some great stories!

> Levy is suggesting we all inhabit small islands of geography, history, society, environment and personality

Larry, I really like this - hadn't thought of it at all before. Makes perfect sense, as well as thinking of those racists who live in their own island of ignorance. Unfortunately there are too many people out there like this.

BTW, I think one of the most powerful passages in the book was this one, and the few previous paragraphs:

"It was inconceivable that we Jamaicans, we West Indians, we members of the British Empire would not fly to the Mother Country's defense when there was a threat. But, tell me, if Jamaica was in trouble, is there any major, any general, any sergeant who would be able to find that dear island? Give me a map, let me see if Tommy Atkins and his ilk can point to Jamaica. Let us watch them turning the page round, screwing up their eyes to look, turning it over to see if perhaps the readion was lost on the back, before shrugging defeat. But give me that map, blindfold me, spin me round three times, and I, dizzy, would still place my finger squarely on the Mother Country. "

Cindy

Cindy that particu;ar passage "resonated" - there's that word again- with me as well.
Australia though under no direct threat at the beginning of the war raised hundreds of thousands of men and sent them off to defend Britain leaving our small island practically defenceless. Our national duty to the "motherland" as it was condidered at the time. When the Japanese entered the war and took Singapore Churchill, despite repeatedly reassuring the Aust. govt. that Britain would help defend Australia in the event of a Japanese invasion, decided to abandon Oz to the Japanese and the Australian government eventually defied him and drew our troops back to defend our own soil and decided it was time to throw ourselves in with the Americans and fought with them for the rest of the war to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific.
Strangely after the war Britain's treachery was almost immediately forgotten and we became tewwibbly English all over again. Such is the fate of all outposts of empire when their defence or maintenance bedcomes too burdensome an impost to the empire builders.
That's the stuff of international and diplomatic machinations and Levy's characters are examples of ordinary people battling to survive with dignity in the rapacious and indifferent maw of imperial decay. Larry

I finally finished this last night and really enjoyed it. Levy created such believable and complex characters and made their experiences so vivid, I felt I was there with them, and getting my head out of the book and back into reality was difficult at times.

Of the characters, I liked Gilbert the best. When Hortense opened the story, he appeared to be a bit of a fool, but once he could tell his own story he showed a deep intelligence and ability to understand himself and the world around him. His two speeches were brilliant, both the one Cindy quoted above and his final words to Bernard: "You know what your trouble is, man? It's your white skin. You think it makes you better than me. You think it give you the right to lord it over a black man. But you know what it make you? You wan' know what your white skin make you, man? It make you white. That's all, man. No better, no worse than me -- just white." Powerful stuff.

I didn't like Hortense very much, but I admired her belief in herself, even after she finally realized what she was up against in England. I did see some growth in her character and I felt she would be a force to be reckoned with once she got her feet under her.

Queenie was so real, so complicated. I thought her background story was necessary to understand why she'd marry Bernard at all. While class distinctions were drilled into her from an early age (miner's children were inferior, Aunt Dorothy wanted to make sure any beaux were of a certain standard), she was very accepting of all the Jamaicans who crossed her path. I think she was a woman with great energy and intelligence who wasn't allowed or couldn't find a way to express it. She did what she could, stuck in a disapproving society and with Bernard and Arthur (who I liked immensely -- when he finally spoke to her, I was a little teary).

While I didn't like Bernard at all, he seemed to me to represent England's image of itself. He was a cliche because he was England. During the war he is repeatedly concerned with maintaining his dignity, he talks about his civilility, he believes he knows best in all circumstances, he is both patronizing and patriarchial. He can't be bothered to learn the Indian's names, then is annoyed when they don't learn his. That Levy can believably make his character unbend just a little and show some tenderness toward Queenie's baby leaves a little room to hope that Bernard and Queenie might be able to make a fresh start.

I had great hopes for Gilbert and Hortense's future at the end of the book, and if I had to choose one hero, it would be Gilbert.

I didn't think the Michael Roberts connection was that contrived. Perhaps his role as a seducer (condemned by both Jamaicans at home and whites in England) was meant to point out the fragility of racial lines.

As for the Jim Crow and the American troops, I found that perfectly believable. The casual racism and tossing about of racial terms that are now so out of...

Sheri, I agree with your point that Bernard is shown to have a spark of humanity when he obviously begins to bond with Queenie's baby. The fact that he seems almost willing to keep the child and give it a home is more than the vast majority of men today (let alone 60 years ago) that have been cuckolded by their wives would be prepared to do. It isn't as though anyone could mistake it as his own.
Re the attitude of the US military to their black troops, or anyone else black that came into their line of vision, and I am trying not to put my foot into it here . . . some of you seem to regard this as ancient history. Are we to understand that the bad old days of racial tensions are all a thing of the past and brother lives in peace with brother?
I have to admit that my ancient VA Great Aunts who I visited in the 70's would still expect a blackman to use the back door. On the other hand they would never ever use foul language; they saw themselves as 'Southern ladies'.
Larry, not time enough to 'go on' about Churchill 'abandoning' Aus in her hour of need. What/who was he going to send to give you protection? The Women's Institute?
Think what happened to the UK troops that were sent to protect Singapore and where they landed up before hardly firing a shot.
Btw my Mother had very fond memories of the Australians who were based on Salisbury Plain before embarkation to the Far East. Happy tales of gross insubordination to 'pip-squeak' British Officers and pinching a machine gun to dispatch a sheep to supplement their rations. And if you know a very elderly bloke called Philip Williams a sometime journalist on the Sydney Morning Herald tell him my Mum waited for him . . . and no, I'm not his daughter.;-)
Levy might be quite correct in that many English people, especially today's youth who seem to learn no geography, couldn't find Jamaica on a map . . .but would we go to their defence? Well what happened when Pres Reagan 'invaded' Grenada in 83/4?, after a military coup? Mrs Thatcher had a huge tantrum and much handbagging took place.
The Falkland conflict would be a better eg. A place with a tiny population, more sheep than people that many folk would think not worth the bother of 'saving', not even of any strategic importance. And of course, that time round Maggie was greatly helped by Ronnie in providing a vital landing/refuelling stop on Ascension Island.

>When the Japanese entered the war and took Singapore Churchill, despite repeatedly reassuring the Aust. govt. that Britain would help defend Australia in the event of a Japanese invasion, decided to abandon Oz to the Japanese and the Australian government eventually defied him and drew our troops back to defend our own soil and decided it was time to throw ourselves in with the Americans and fought with them for the rest of the war to defeat the Japanese in the Pacific.

Wow, I had no idea.

And veer, intersting counter view from a Brit. Do either of you have reading recs on this subject, from both hemispheres?

> his final words to Bernard

Even more powerful when Bernard responded with 'I have no idea what you are talking about'.

>While I didn't like Bernard at all, he seemed to me to represent England's image of itself. He was a cliche because he was England

Sheri, good point. Being a cliche was probably what seemed wooden to me, and I can see how'd he'd represent England, on so many levels

BTW, this is my first book of Levy's as well, and I'd love to read more. Any recs?

> some of you seem to regard this as ancient history

Mmm - I didn't pick up on this in the comments, I think folk were just surprised by it on the US side. I definitely know racism is alive and well - all I have to do is read letters to the editor here about the horrible 'illegal aliens' (aka folks who do not have the money or education to complete the process, but who want a better life for their children). The vehemance and bigotry that often oozes out of their words is sickening.

>Happy tales of gross insubordination to 'pip-squeak' British Officers and pinching a machine gun to dispatch a sheep to supplement their rations

I love this. Trying to remember the name of the movie we saw a while back - about four Australian women in a town suddenly 'invaded' by the Marines. Some sweet love stories, but also much about the conditions of life at that time. That incident would have fit in well with this movie.

And Maggie and Ronnie were indeed quite a team. Thank goodness they weren't married living in the same country....

Vee, racism is certainly not dead and gone, however the insulting language and open hostility have been driven underground at the very least. Political correctness eliminated most usage of the more noxious terms that were hurled at Gilbert in the book. To see the N word in print these days is actually kind of shocking, at least to me.

As for finding Jamaica on a map ... if you've ever watched Jay Leno (do you get his show in the UK?) you'd find that there are plenty of people in the US who think you can drive to Europe and aren't sure where Canada is. And I don't think he has to look very hard to find them. It's appalling.

Hi Vee. No, of course England had no resources to send to defend Oz. England's resources were exhausted and I don't think any Australian would have expected troops or any sort of help from Britain. It's just that Churchill, being the champion of empire that he was, wanted all Empire troops used to defend England and her empire leaving Australia defenceless - even going to the extent of ordering Australian troopships returning home to turnabout and defend Burma. Curtin the Aus PM had to actually defy Churchill and insist these troops be returned to defend Australia in the face of the Japanese advance. Churchill spent a lot of time trying to convince the Americans esp Rooseveldt to concentrate on defeating Germany in Europe and abandon Australia to the Japanese. He succeeded initially to the extent that when Curtin pulled Australian trops back to defend Australia Rooseveldt issued a public statement saying that Australia's actions smacked of "panic and betrayal".
Ah well hardly the place to debate the history of an almost forgotten moment in a cataclysmic global conflict. Merely used it as an illustration of why I can appreciate Gilbert's feelings of betrayal. His is the fate of all children of all empires. Schooled in every way about the "Motherland" and their duties to it and always eager to rush and defend the seat of empire they are nevertheless abandoned when the cost of empire becomes too great to handle.
Not trying in the slightest to beat England over the head with this. It's the nature of imperialism and has happened time and time again through history. Levy's achievement has to be admired in that she has managed to embody a moment of such history so beautifully in her four main characters. Larry

>As for finding Jamaica on a map

While I agree that the state of geography education in the world is dismal, this isn't the point of his rant. Look at the paragraph before that passage. He knows England - its not just that he knows where England is, but he knows its cities and towns and rivers, its government, its exports, its farms, its major sights. Its not just that the English don't know where Jamaica is on the map. Its that the English don't even seem to know that Jamaica (and hence Jamaicans) exist

I spent one lovely afternoon tubing down the White River in the Jamaican mountains. Highly recommended if you ever go.

I didn't dislike Bernard. I felt sorry for him. He tried to do the right thing by his own lights. But more than most, he was cast loose from the old world without moorings. He could see clearly the past. Gilbert saw clearly the future. A small part of that was generational. We saw in Bernard's army career that he didn't understand the younger men he was stationed with.

Sheri we get the Jay Leno show here in Oz and am always amazed at his "Jaywalking" segments. My reaction always is that this apparent ignorance is surely exaggerated. I can understand a little Americans thinking that Australia is Austria and being a little bemused that we speak English with some competence, but to imagine that by heading south that they will cross the Canadian border or that Moscow is the capital of Germany seemed to be stretching credibility a little and surely had to be the result of some efforts by Jay's comedy writers.
Are you telling me that I'm mistaken? That the most powerful nation on earth is just another "small island"?

Larry, I'm sure Leno seeks these folks out for his segments -- he's not interviewing college professors by any stretch -- but my impression is that these people sincerely don't have a clue and the answers they give aren't a set-up. I hope I'm mistaken!

While my family, friends and colleagues pretty much share a general knowledge of the world, there are many who either don't know or don't care or both. They indeed are small islands unto themselves. If you look at certain extremists groups both in the US, and elsewhere in the world, its the commonality that they share - insular isolationists, who live on their small little island.

I also suspect that this insular way of life is not only an American trait. Human nature is universal, no matter where you live. Each country has people who are learners, who are curious, and who seek out knowledge. And then there are others for whom such thinking is beyond their imagination. . We only need look at the anti-immigrant stance in Europe, or the recent violence in the Islamic countries to see this.

BTW, the passage I eluded to upthread is here -

>See me now - a small boy dressed in a uniform of navy blue, a white shirt, a tie, short trousers and long white socks. I am standing up in my classroom; the bright sunlight through the shutters draws lines across the room. My classmates, my teacher, all look at me, waiting. My chest is puffed like a major on parade, chin high, arms low. Hear me now - a loud clear voice that pronounces every p and q and all the letters in between. I begin to recite the canals of England, the Parliment at Westminster - the Lords and Commons. If I were given a date I could tell you of the great laws that were debated and passed there. ..Ask any of us British colonists where in Britain ships are built, where is cotton woven, steel forged, cars made, jams boiled, cups shaped, lace knotted, glass blown, tin mined, whiskey distilled? Ask. Then sit back and learn your lesson.

>Now see this. An English soldier, a Tommy called Tommy. Skin as pale as soap, hair slicked with oil and shinier than his boots. See him sitting in a pub sipping a glass of warming rum and rolling a cigarette from a tin. Ask him "Tommy, tell me, where is Jamaica?". And hear him reply - "Well dunno. Africa, ain't it?"

Cindy

Perhaps someone can describe for me the action of "s*cking teeth" (the asterisk is there because I got a nasty message that I was using what could be perceived as an offensive term).

Levy uses the phrase over and over (I counted at least twenty times before I lost track) and apparently it is descriptive enough for anyone who is familiar with the action, but I'm not sure that I have ever observed it. Levy seems to imply it's a characteristic cultural habit of Jamaicans when surprised or in sharp contemplation. I'm wondering if it's drawing air or saliva through the teeth, producing a squeaky or chirrupy sound; or maybe it's curling the top lip down over and under the front teeth with suction, sometimes accompanied afterward with "chewing of the lip" with the bottom teeth. It's a picayunish detail, to be sure, but a rather puzzling one, I think, but probably only because I'm unsure what Levy is really describing.

Hmmm...I check in this evening only to find no response to my post of earlier today. I thought surely there would be at least one. How am I supposed to interpret this? :-) Did no one else notice Levy's repeated references of "s*cking teeth"? Does everyone but me know exactly what she's talking about? Or maybe no one else knows either, so you can't describe what you don't know? Oh well, I guess I will remain puzzled. I wish I could actually see someone in the action of "s*cking teeth."

Okay, on to other things. I enjoyed this novel very much in spite of all the characters and situations being rather stereotypical. I've read other stories (both fiction and nonfiction) about immigrants disillusioned with the countries they decided to immigrate to -- unfulfilled expectations, culture shock, and all that. In a way, the stereotyping works to Levy's story's advantage: the reader can readily identify, empathize and sympathize with, or at least recognize, what's going on with these characters. You don't have to have ever been an immigrant yourself to get it.

The stock situations also help. Many World War II stories about wartime Britain usually include something about the "invasion" by American GIs, whom many young Englishwomen found exotic and fascinating (lots of war brides and love children being the result) but were highly resented by older people and Englishmen. The racism of the American military is well known and is usually treated in a clichéd manner, and I can't say that Levy's description was any less so. I'm not disputing that racism existed and that sometimes it was exhibited in unsubtle ways, but I think the portrayal of it is usually done with a sledgehammer to the head when an icepick to the heart would get the message across just as effectively. Levy used the former.

Something that jarred me: When Gilbert was sent, as a driver, to the American Army base to pick up the airplane parts, he overheard the American officer saying that he couldn't send a "coloured man" amongst the GIs. This does not sound legit to me and I'll tell you why. My father was a driving instructor during his first year in the army. He taught, among others, several platoons of black GIs to drive jeeps and trucks. Many drivers were needed for transporting personnel and materiél all over the States and many were also sent overseas. Most of the young black men my father instructed were from the large northern U.S. cities and had never had any reason to learn to drive -- most of the young men from the South, black and white, already knew how to drive. My point is this then: Black GIs driving vehicles was nothing out of the ordinary, even sometimes in predominantly white army companies. It's true that black and white soldiers were housed separately with differing mess hours, but that's a different issue (not one I'm defending, btw). It's not likely that the U.S. Army would have had riots among its white GIs just because a black...

Sure I noticed "s*cking teeth" Frieda. Never one to shy away from extensive research simply typed 'jamaica - s*cking teeth" including the "u" into google and discovered it was a jamaican gesture of disapproval accomplished by clenching your teeth and s*cking as though drawing something up through a straw. How this particular method of signifying displeasure was arrived at I never found out - not that I extended my research far beyond this point. Larry

freida, I just took from context that it meant disapproval. What the actual act is I am not sure, but I can guess its the lips closed against the teeth.

>(the asterisk is there because I got a nasty message that I was using what could be perceived as an offensive term).

Amazing. Was this from your browser, or from this site?
Next thing you know they aren't going to allow us to talk about breast cancer any more.

Frieda, my familiarity with the Jamaican teeth-sucking thing comes from the comedy actor Lenny Henry - all his Jamaican characters did this extensively. As far as I can tell, the tongue is pushed up against the back of the upper front teeth, mouth slightly open, with an intake of breath. It produces a little squeaky noise, and is usually accompanied with a shake of the head. It seems to be the Jamaican equivalent of tutting.

Heh! Thanks everyone for helping to clear up my confusion and give me some idea about one of Jamaica's apparently best-known cultural mannerisms. The Gallic shrug, Italian gesturing, the Canadian "eh", etc., are habits that fascinate me. Anyanka, I'm not familiar with Lenny Henry, but I'll watch out for him, hoping to see him demonstrate the teeth thing.

Cindy, I lost my original post when I got the nasty-gram, so I think it was this site. And I was unable to retrieve it by hitting the back or refresh buttons, as I have sometimes done. I was p.o.'ed because my original was quite lengthy, and I had to rewrite in the stilted way above to not be censored. I guessed the suction word was the problem, but now I'm not sure (though I'm not taking any chances to lose another post) because Anyanka managed to get the word in. It all seems capricious. The former management of this site had some sort of program that sent posters automatically to a Disney web site when they used verboten words and phrases, in addition to having posts erased. You may read some of the long-termers here talking about getting "Disneyed," shorthand for upsetting the censor. It didn't happen frequently, but I was Disneyed a number of times, often not knowing what I had written to cause the action. I'm guessing that the message warning is the new management's replacement.

>The former management of this site had some sort of program that sent posters automatically to a Disney web site when they used verboten words and phrases, in addition to having posts erased

Oh dear - glad for the change of management, nu?

Not glad of the change in management. We had all kinds of irritating problems when they changed the site over. Fixed now, but we weren't happy for a while. Besides, Disney was a gentle way of reminding people to behave themselves and kept out the tiresome with very limited vocabularies.

Well, as a newbie I will remain silent then. I just get frustrated by things that frieda encountered, and I often have a knee jerk reaction when Disney is involved. But thats a conversation for another place - and it sounds like it worked well for some things ...

Frieda, weird coincidences abound in my life. Last night, I came across four of five mentions of teeth-sucking in Elmore Leonard's 'Maximum Bob'. In this case it was carried out by Cubans in Florida.

Mmm - ok, I guess you guys discuss for two weeks? This was my first discussion here, and I was thrilled to find such an intelligent and thoughtful bunch of readers to discuss with!

Now on to Birds without Wings....

Cindy

No Cindy, this discussion could go on for however long it takes. There's no time limit!

Watched an interesting TV prog last night, part of a series about tracing your ancestors. This one followed an English/Jamaican family back to their roots in that country. The father had come to the UK to sign-on in WWII and joined the RAF. After the war he made it his career and his daughters and wife (a white English woman) followed him on postings all round the world.
They told how he had 'joined up' through his love of the Mother country and to have some adventure in his life, and that as a child he had attended a C of E school and knew more about the geography and history of the UK than he did about his own island. Surprisingly he suffered little racial abuse and only once was he called 'Sambo' answering "There is no Sambo round here. My name is Johnny, remember that!"
Interesting to see the echoes of what Levy had written about.

Re Gilbert learning at school all those facts about the British Isles. I think we need to remember that he would have been educated around the 1920's when such things were taught and memorised. My parents generation would have been able to spout lists of the seas, rivers, bays, headlands, main exports etc of the major countries of the world, especially those of the Empire. Would this have been the same in the US of that time?
The ties with this 'Empire', which today we tend to belittle, were very strongly felt.
I think it is probably true to say that almost every family in the UK had a relative, however distant, who had left to make a better life. I have distant 'kin' somewhere in Aus who last contacted the family during WWII with a food parcel. "Thank you for the tins of lard, where ever you are."
In this small village the local 'big-wig' was, in the 1920's Gov General of New Zealand. On his retirement he set up a fund to enable poor boys to settle in NZ. Folk around here, mostly agricultural labourers, travel the globe visiting relations at the drop of a hat.
When the UK entered the Common Market many people were genuinely upset that our ties and trade with the Commonwealth would be broken.
Of course times change, and as Larry indicates we can't excect a cosmopolitan country such as Aus to treat the UK with any particular reverence or sing 'God Save the Queen'. In fact many people are waiting to see when the Star Spangled Banner will be Top of the Pops over there :-)

I was watching a show on PBS last night about Windsor Castle (a behind the scenes type of thing, it showed all the staff and efforts involved in hosting a very big-deal state dinner for 140 guests). One of the housemaids interviewed said she'd grown up in South Africa where the Queen "was always at the dinner table with us" as her portrait hung in a place of honor in the family dining room. This woman's "dream" was to come and work for the royal family, and she emigrated and sought out this employment. I was a bit surprised at her ambition and devotion in this day and age (I'm guessing she was in her 40s), but she appeared to be sincerely delighted to be dusting and polishing for Queen and country.

Along the same lines as Vee's comments above, it reminded me of this book and the Jamaican's emotional ties to England. This South African woman obviously felt the same way. Of course, there are also plenty of American Anglophiles who are as devoted to England and all things English as any member of the Commonwealth.

Anyanka, that's interesting about the Cubans teeth-sucking, too. Sounds like it must be more of a Caribbean thing and not limited to Jamaica.Of course, there are also plenty of American Anglophiles who are as devoted to England and all things English as any member of the Commonwealth.Sheri, don't you think, though, that Anglophilia gets more diffuse the farther west you go in the U.S., where there's not as great a concentration of English ancestry? But even amongst those who are of British descent it seems curiously watered down in places such as, say, Colorado and Texas, two that I have experience with. In both those states, and in several others, the big ranches, for example, were often started by Americans of English heritage but also quite frequently by Englishmen and Scotsmen as fresh immigrants. Okay, it was probably more convenient for them to shed attachments than it was for the Commonwealth subjects and American easterners -- portraits of the Queen in dining rooms were probably never commonplace, etc.

American Anglophilia is more peculiar, I think, than that of countries who stayed with the empire longer -- I'll stick with the -philia part though there is plenty of Anglophobia amongst former Commonwealth nations, too. I know many Americans, readers especially, who think period piece and historical novel mean the stories are set somewhere in the British Isles, probably in medieval times through the nineteenth century. They will give only grudging consideration to any other setting and times. What's with that? I have to admit that I've been much the same way.

Sheri, I don't know anyone here in the UK who has a photo of the Queen in their home, nor do we go in for flag flying as you do in the US. In fact if you see a Union Jack/Flag flying on a 'public building' eg a Town Hall or similar, you immediately think "Oh! It must be a special occasion" and then wonder what it is.
Positive attempts are being made to make us in the UK more aware and proud of our 'heritage', especially since the various political/religious troubles. People who want to become British citizens now have to take a simple test and swear an oath of allegiance at a public ceremony, rather on US lines.
Re. American Anglophilia/phobia I suppose US folk of 'English/British' descent would look back to their forebears' origins. Were they sent over to Georgia as convicts? Did they have wicked Scottish landlords who evicted them from their crofts (always blamed on the English!)? Were they dour Puritans escaping religious restrictions and ready to convert the heathen Indians? Perhaps this would colour their views of the UK.
An elderly US Aunt became quite over-excited when visiting England at the time of the Queen's Silver Jubilee, but couldn't remember whether she had seen Mrs Thatcher or the Queen. We told her that Mrs T was the one with the bigger handbag.
When I lived in Ottawa, Canada, in 69/70 there was some anti British and lots of anti French feeling among younger people (and even more anti Anglo feeling from the Québecois) but often older Canadians, and men who had served in the UK during the war would ask "How are things in the old country?" The men were more likely to remember the country pubs they had visited!

Frieda, I would agree that American Anglophilia seems to be confined to WWII and all that went before, right back into the days of Arthur and Merlin.

Speaking for myself and several of my Anglophile friends, I admit we find pre-1950 England far more romantic and fascinating than England today. There are centuries of romantic figures, 1,000 year old buildings, exotic Commonwealth countries, and a gazillion grand adventures to read about and admire. We don't necessarily want anything contemporary (or worse, similar to America) when there's so much romance to English history, even more recent history. That's my take on it, anyway.

I don't know if interest in England changes as you go west, but I'll take your word for it. I've spent my life in New England and my travels tend to take me south and east. I've been to England, Spain and France, but never to Texas, though I did go to California once. New York State is about the furthest west I go on a regular basis.

Vee, we've always had flags flying on public buildings, and since 9/11 you'll see flags flying at private homes, as well.

Your point re: having Brit ancestors is interesting because of my friends who consider themselves Anglophiles, only one has any English background at all. Maybe it's a New England thing, and we still feel some sort of connection, or maybe it's just because all my friends are serious readers and we all took British Literature together in high school and never recovered *vbg*.

Having lived in San Franciso I can attest to the fact that interest in all things English is just as common there as it is here in Eastern Pennsylvania.However,I didn't see that when living in Iowa and Oklahoma.

>But even amongst those who are of British descent it seems curiously watered down in places such as, say, Colorado and Texas, two that I have experience with

That may be, tho you'd be surprised by how many Angliophiles we have here in the southwest desert. In fact, perhaps more so - in this part of the country, people want everything new. In my city, just about everything older than 1950 is gone (with the exception of a few neighborhoods) People think 'antique' is before WWII. So my first trip overseas as a new High School graduate was eye opening to me. I was in Israel - and suddenly I realized how old the world is. I was fascinated by the cities made of adobe and the buildings that existed hundreds of years ago. I remember being in the Israel Museum and standing forever it seemed at the Dead Sea Scrolls. ASince then its been a love affair with the ancient. Which is probably why I love going to Britain (and I got my husband hooked on it too) So sometimes its what you don't have that makes you appreciate another place.

>Would this have been the same in the US of that time?

Yes, until the 60s. The main reason that memorization of such things was pushed aside is that it wasn't relevant to the kids. But they didn't think of a better way. If they teach about the rivers and lakes and main exports within the context of historic or cultural lessons, they'd find the kids much more intersted, and they'd even learn some geography on the way.

>This woman's "dream" was to come and work for the royal family, and she emigrated and sought out this employment. I was a bit surprised at her ambition and devotion in this day and age

We forget sometimes how very lucky we are, with the myraid of choices and options we have. Many others in other countries, esp women, don't. Working for the queen for this lady probably beat anything else she'd ever want to do, and had never had an idea that she could do better. Bet in a few years tho, she will!

>What's with that?

The one country they were taught about in school the longest was probably Britain, and so they associate historic fiction with it. Also suspect that there are probably more movies that take place in Britain than in other countries. Would be interesting to know. As for me, I have always loved cultural geography and historic fiction anywhere. But I do know what you mean.

btw veer - we will be going to Ottawa (and Montreal and Quebec City) in June. Can I pick your brain about Ottawa? We already have a list of the usually museums and such, but maybe out of the way places, day trips?

Let me make a suggestion that in Quebec City you stop at the Aux Anciens Canadiens Restaurant and have their maple syrup pie for dessert. It is touted to be the best pie in North America, and I think they may be right. The building is the oldest house there and interesting to see in its own right.

As sometimes happens, my expectations of this book were very high (based on several recommendations) and as a result I was rather disappointed in Small Island. I suppose I was waiting to be 'blown away' by the novel as I had been by The Kite Runner and a few others last year, and yet it didn't happen for me.

SPOILER:
The 'coincidence' which was Michael Roberts was rather too contrived, although I liked the fact that Hortense never found out the identity of the baby's father (well not in this book at least!).

My favourite character? Probably Gilbert, for his honesty, politeness and resilience. But I also liked Queenie who really belonged to the end of the 20th century, not the middle of it. Hortense seemed to me to be a 'nasty piece of work', while Bernard was just pathetic.

I found it was one of those books that while reading it I was constantly thinking about what I would be reading next, and wishing that I was nearer the end of the book.
I would rate it 7/10.

Jane
UK

Jane, I find it interesting that you make the comparison with 'The Kite Runner', as my experience has been exactly reversed - I am currently reading The KR, and find it disappointing because I was hoping for the creation of atmosphere in the manner of 'Small Island'!

Yeah, I wouldn't compare those two at all - while KR was ok, and it taught me about Afghani culture, its writing didn't hold a candle to Small Island - but then viva la difference.

I read this book for my book club in one evening (it was a late night) mainly because I didn't want to put it down and also because I had forgotten that my book club started up so early in September and I had two days to read the selection.
I thought it was going to be one of those sad, preachy stories about racism that tend to be oh so predictable. The book was a delight with unforgettable characters. It has been one of the few books that I have lately where the change in narration and the "before and after" chapters actually worked for me.
I enjoyed the comments above and wish that I had read it along with you back in February.
A couple of questions I had when I finished the book:

1. Would Queenie have raised the baby herself if Bernard hadn't come back?

2. What do you think Hortense was going to do with the money that Queenie had sewn in the diaper? She was going to keep the picture of Queenie and the money secret from Gilbert.

Now I know that most of the original posters probably couldn't remember enough to answer these Qs but possibly some newer readers might want to comment.

It has been a while! But let me give those a whirl

1) She had such a heart of gold that it wouldn't surprise me if she offered. But I think she'd think long and hard about the long term consequences of that decision.

2) I didn't get the impression that Hortense was going to keep the money a secret (tho I may have missed something along the way) I had the impression that both of them were at a point in the relationship where they trusted each other and I just don't see her deciding to keep it secret, or how she could.