“Small Island”
by Andrea Levy
Published: April 2004
ISBN: 0755307518

(Updated: December 27, 2004.)

Another book that came to me highly recommended…

From the Publisher…

Following the end of the Second World War, Queenie Bligh has taken into her house Jamaican tenants Gilbert and Hortense Joseph. In this delicately wrought and profoundly moving tale of their lives interweaving, Andrea Levy handles the weighty themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, with a lightness of touch and a generosity of spirit that challenges and uplifts the reader.

An amazing book. Absolutely a "can’t put it down" and "can’t stop thinking about it" novel. The kind that you have to finish but you know that you really don’t want to be over. Yes. Wonderful. And horrible. Thoughts and actions and sentiments that I hope are long over but I fear aren’t. We all have a story. Were we to know, to listen to, to hear, to tell each of them, I am convinced… what?… that we would find the care and compassion we are, each of us, looking for.

And, on that note, this book was lent to me by a friend currently in India with her partner. They arrived there the day before the earthquake. I send them and all affected, waves of a very different kind. I so hope they find their way to them.