"Small Island" book discussion

[evanovitch]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

but u miss the fact that Hortense finally has Michael in her life...she leaves wid his son to raise as her own ...so wat if she dont know dat....

[Gen]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

after the ending I thought there was going to be another book...may questions left unanswered.

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">but u miss the fact that Hortense finally has Michael in her life...she leaves wid his son to raise as her own ...so wat if she dont know dat.... </div></div>

Good point. And she may even realise it's Michael's pickney when the boy get bigger and start favour him daddy. Like Jahneeva seh, questions unanswered.

So why Queenie nuh lef Bernard???? I don't understand that part. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

[evanovitch]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Magic</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">but u miss the fact that Hortense finally has Michael in her life...she leaves wid his son to raise as her own ...so wat if she dont know dat.... </div></div>

Good point. And she may even realise it's Michael's pickney when the boy get bigger and start favour him daddy. Like Jahneeva seh, questions unanswered.

So why Queenie nuh lef Bernard???? I don't understand that part. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img] </div></div>

why would Queeniw leave Bernard? Queenie and Bernard represent the reality that is Britain....the good and bad of it....think of their INDIVIDUAL thinking and traits....the aside, that was Michael, is almost like the sex tourism forays that r being written about in the British press these days....Queenie represents the reality of stratified lines not being breached in British society , even as she showcases the blatant prejudices of their Allies the American....which is worse, is the question u ask...the British way of maintaining the division behind dem stiff uppa lip or the US , out in the open, i dont want to have u intimate wid me ( an intimate in the broad sense of the meaning apart from sex).....Queenie is honest in ALLLLLLL her dealings.....Queenie is the real England...come, help mi out, but i will not keep u forever..as soon as i am bak on mi feet u haffi find u own....[img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Interesting E.

It mek sense thou. Queenie and Bernard are the two faces of England, just like Hortense and Gilbert are the two different faces of Jamaica.

And I guess as readers, in both of those cases, we want a different face to emerge. But it can't because it is what it is. So there can't be a different ending to the story, because it wouldn't be a story of England, but rather some better place.

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Magic</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
So mi get vex with this book again as mi reach di ending. Cha! I don't see why Queenie don't leave Bernard? [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70400-talktohand.gif[/img] Since he was her first man she didn't know any better before. But after the war you'd think she'd wisen up an lef im to rhatid!

What unu make out of Gilbert and Hortense 'love'? It was obviously a marriage of convenience in the beginning. He needed money for the boat fare to England. She needed someone to look after here there. Hortense warm up to Gilbert only after he fulfills her dream (or as close as you can get to it) of getting a house. Gilbert start looking at Hortense's uppityness as a strength. Is their newly found love genuine?

Why there's no word about Michael towards the ending. He's one of the central characters and the most scarce. It's what connects the whole story together with Hortense and Queenie both being involved with him. It that the author's shortcomming, or an intentional omission?

</div></div>

Lawks, mi dun it laas night. Well, since mi did prips whe oonuu did say bout de ending, the 'surprise' of Queenie giving away the baby that she obviously adored and whom Bernard had warmed to, did not hit as the author intended.

I could understand her loving the baby enough to give him to 'his kind' and I could understand her maturity and insight - but only to a degree...some of it was so...plastic... it just didn't have the ring of truth to it...

The whole 'Because I don't know how to comb his hair, Bernard' was prolly meant to be flip, but all it did was made me kiss mi teet... [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70400-talktohand.gif[/img]

She apparently faced up to her inevitable 'shortcomings' as a mother to a black child. Her preemptive move of giving him away before Bernard could say something racist to the baby, or before the baby could suffer the taunts of his peers, or before she had to subject Bernard to any ridicule - was made ludicrous by her claims of wanting to keep intouch with Hortense, Gilbert and the baby. Of wanting the baby to know where he came from and that he was loved.

Cha [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif[/img]


Also I found it unbelievable that Hortense accepted the baby. Hortense had been selfish from the get go. No likkle innocent 'coloured' baby was going to cause her to do a 360.

As regards Michael, I didn't see him as a central character. He was more like an afterthought. Like the author needed a connection between the white and black protagonists and Michael was it - the black man who had a thing for blondes ~lol~

[CeaBee]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

and u ask why me neva like it.... [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70365-flirt.gif[/img]

u and MG said it all so eloquently [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

[evanovitch]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

u r reading the book from the perspective of C21st thinking....why would she not have a problem caring for a black child...memba, up until then, social intercourse wid blacks had been nonexistent to a form...an Hortense has been selfish where it touches on her tunnelvision mission to go to England....she herself was a child given away because of her skin tone.....full circle moment ....but i read this book and see such critical social issues of that time which r still here today

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

But even wid alla dat, mi still like ie [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70394-bawlout.gif[/img]

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">u r reading the book from the perspective of C21st thinking....why would she not have a problem caring for a black child...memba, up until then, social intercourse wid blacks had been nonexistent to a form...</div></div>

There were parts where the writer wrote from a 21st century perspective. Some of her social insights were insights that only evolved after time, after the civil movement and such... and that messed with the authenticity for me.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: evanovitch</div><div class="ubbcode-body">an Hortense has been selfish where it touches on her tunnelvision mission to go to England....she herself was a child given away because of her skin tone.....full circle moment ....but i read this book and see such critical social issues of that time which r still here today </div></div>



I never got the feeling that Hortense bemoaned her being given away as a child. I thought she was of the opinion that her being given away was the natural progression of one so complected and the fruit of one so noble. She was bred with raised (even though she wasn't really treated as an equal to Michael) with an air of entitlement. She believed if she displayed the correct manners (even in private) spoke with the proper elocution, mixed with the right sort (if yuh too black, yuh nuh good - c'mon, she never really believed Celia was in her class) and dem type a ting deh, that the world was her playground and everyone not so blessed was her servant.

She believed that Gilbert wasn't good enough. She prostituted herself to him (even though she with-held sex til he got the house) to get to the altar of high-class: England. She did nothing for anyone unless, it served her first.

How was raising a child by a white 'uncouth' woman going to benefit her? It would interfere with her plan to get the required certification needed to teach in England. It would mean sharing the 'big room' with someone else (Gilbert was bad enough, even after she started to see that he had potential). It would mean, cleaning up after, tending to, being the primary provider for one who couldn't recommend her.

Nah. I'on buy it.

[Gen]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Nunya</div><div class="ubbcode-body">But even wid alla dat, mi still like ie [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70394-bawlout.gif[/img] </div></div>

okay...bout Hortense 360...I think unnu figet seh Hortense did a complete 360 as soon as Gilbert get the "house"...

the house that Hortense so wanted with the doorbell knocker or warra...having the house made everything "alright" in her eyes.

mi sure seh if Gilbert did start lick har...it would be "okay" because she get har house..even though it wasn't really "their" house...so yeah mi can believe seh she tek the baby

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Yeah, but the house was a poached dream. She poach Celia's man an she poach Celia's dream of a house wid a doorbell.

The baby was nobody's dream. It nuh mek sense.

[Gen]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

mi juss think the author leff nuff question unanswered and mi nuh like har style of doing that [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70388-shameonyou.gif[/img]

[mountaingal]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

i was gonna go back and read the early days of Hortense's youth, but mi could not badda. my general impressions of this book:

1. it did not convey effectively to me the pre-war era in Jamaica with the telling of Gilbert's and Hortense's stories, as it did for England with the telling of Queenie's story. did Hortense grow up in a rural area? what were the signs of the social distinctions in the general community that contributed to the Anderson's and therefore HOrtense's social aspirations? If Hortense had a black grandmother in her life everyday, what did that grandmother's love and affection do for her character. and by the way, mi never buy the thing bout the Grandmother having to call her own grandpickney Miss Hortense in public - not whipart mi come from.

2. Whameck Michael never try a ting wid Hortense?

3. it was implausible to me that Michael affair wid di white teacher woman only buss after di husband ketch dem - in a Jamaican community di suss woulda been going on for long. And it was implausible to me that Hortense, a young woman with a certain sense of her self socially would squeeze into a chicken coop fi deal wid har broken heart.

4. mi neva like the various poop metaphors in the book - for example Gilbert seeing a piece of jewellery on the ground in England and finding out it was a fly encrusted piece of doggie do - the metaphor was unnecessarily disgusting.

5. mi find it implausible dat Gilbert work as a partner fi a white guy weh get sick and when dem try assign him a new white partner, a den di big racial scene occur - how him get di job in di first place and managed to survive so long at it if all dat racism was there?

6. Queenie said the word "blinking" at least twice per page for about 6 chapters (or that's what if felt like). I started to wonder at the author's lack of imagination or the editor's lack of skill, caw nuff time that word could have been left out without any effect whatsoever on the intensity of the dialogue.

7. the night after she slept with michael, queenie found his wallet that he had left behind, and proceeded to describe the contents this way:"There were photographs in its tattered inside. One of an old negro man standing formally in front of a house. Looking to all the world like a chimpanzee in clothes, this lord of the manor stood behind a seated black woman with white hair and a face as grumpy as Monday morning. Another was of a little darkie girl with fuzzy-wuzzy hair tied in ribbons as big as bandages." i got confused. is Queenie a racist? why she had to describe the man as looking like a chimp? if these are her usual thoughts, is she feeling revulsion at having slept with michael?

and that was my problem throughout this whole damn book - I could not get a fix on each person's character to the point where I could feel this person was real to me.

Hence, my difficulties, as I stated earlier, trying to understand Hortense and how she got her notions of how British people were when she was living in Jamaica. Was it from the teachers at the teaching school, the nuns with their aura of superiority? did she admire those nuns? I don't know.

Gilbert, again, someone I know from the way he reacts to the racism in England and elsewhere, not someone I could say I know to the core, or ended up caring very much about.

Queenie - well, i did not appreciate that she got to sleep with a black man before Hortense did, and Hortense did married to one. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70400-talktohand.gif[/img]

mi neva like dis book, have to say.

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Michael neva try nutn with Hortense cawse im preference was older white oomen.

There was more than one poop met??? ~lol~

Queenie say the blinking word as often as mi say 'flippin heck' and 'bloody hell' and 'to rhatid'. Fimi catch phrase dem deh [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/whistle.gif[/img]

Queenie is a racist - cyaa belee yuh actually haffi ask dat. An btw, memba how she describe Bernard's idea of a roll in the hay??? I'm sure she thought anything would be better... plus, Michael is supposed to be handsome and charismatic... and black (read big bamboo ~lol~) shoot, race hadn't a chance...

I liked Gilbert alot. I often laughed out loud at his musings. I liked the book because of Gilbert.