Small Island

Set in Jamaica and England in the 1920s up to 1948, this is a powerful story on discrimination, of whites towards blacks in England and to a lesser extent between the color/social classes in Jamaica. Hortense Roberts, Gilbert Joseph and Michael Roberts are the black Jamaicans, England-bound for war against Hitler and later for a better life. Queenie and Bernard are the typical white English. Each tells his or her story in first person.

Michael and Gilbert are both in the war, but Michael’s plane is shot down in France and he is taken for dead by the family. Both come across Queenie in England at different times while her husband Bernard also away to the war is yet to return two years after. In her loneliness, Queenie falls for Michael’s seduction, and their three-day romance gets her pregnant. With Michael gone, Queenie tries her best to lose the baby but none works. So she resorts to tying up her belly and breasts to conceal them from prying eyes, until the very day she gives birth, to a colored boy.

This event is a very unexpected climax, especially as Bernard has finally seen it fit to return home, and Hortense and Gilbert now married are finding life in England difficult due to racism. It is to Hortense that Queenie turns to get the baby delivered, and surprisingly all go well. And then there is a powerful emotional ending in which Queenie has to beg Hortense and Gilbert to keep the baby because being whites she and Bernard could not face a future of raising a black child amidst a sea of prejudiced white neighbors.

July 23, 2015. Review initially written in 2005. Novel first published in 2004. Picture source: Google Books.