Sunday, September 24, 2006

Itty Bitty Book Review: Small Island

"Small Island" by Andrea Levy

Annette put me on to this writer (British) and I was very impressed with this novel. I see it won the Whitbread Book of the Year and Orange Prize for Fiction when it was published in 2004. Very well deserved and I'll look forward to reading more of her books. It takes place during the forties and revolves around the experience of a Jamaican volunteer soldier for the British during the war and afterwards. He returns to Jamaica then soon immigrates to Britain. Levy accomplishes an amazing feat of making us feel very deeply the hurt of racial prejudice yet entertaining us with laugh out loud humour at the human foibles of everyone. Highly recommended.