"Small Island" book discussion

[MrsBlue]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<span style="color: #3333FF">Okay, I finally read through the whole thread and I'm sorry that I wasn't participating while it was going on. I see that some of the things I stated were already discussed. I'm still working on Robinson and damned if I didn't just box up Things Fall Apart. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif[/img]

Anyway, I enjoyed the book and would give it a 3 1/2. </span>

[CeaBee]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

what u mean by "box up"? please fi explain and memba fi speak propa inna di literatcher forum.

[MrsBlue]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<span style="color: #3333FF">Literally. I cleared my bookshelves and boxed all my books. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/frown.gif[/img] </span>

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: justblue</div><div class="ubbcode-body">There was someplace in the book that talked about England being an island, though. Or on an island.</div></div>

Page 238 When Bernard tells Queenie his assignment is 'overseas'.

"Where overseas? How far? We live on an island, for God's sake, everywhere is blinking overseas."



<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: justblue</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I thought that the "Small Island" was Jamaica, but that it was only in comparison to England that there was realization that Jamaica was such.

I thought it was interesting because we'd just a couple of weeks ago had a conversation about other Caribbean islands being called "small island" compared to Jamaica and here Jamaica was being considered a small island.</div></div>


From the first time I read this book I know the title Small Island referred to the U.K.

And it's not in terms of square miles, but in the terms of Small Island Mentality

I can't find the exact part in the book but when Gilbert was in the RAF everytime he mention Jamaica, the idiot people stare at him clueless of where it is. At the same time, Gilbert knows his geography very well and it surprised the dumb Brits don't.

Another of the many signs of narrow-mindness and "small island syndrome" is Mr. Todd and other neighbours of Queenie.

"Too many Poles. Overrun by Czechs. COuldn't move for Belgians. And as for the Jews. They moaned about the Jews even after we knew what the poor beggars had been through. They were all right in their own country, Mr. Todd reasoned, but he wanted none of them down our street."

Yes, Small Island is none other than England herself.

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

I think Small Island was also Jamaica. Gilbert kept refering to his friends being from small islands - or land masses smaller than Jamaica.

But there came a point where he had to recognise that Jamaica was a small island too. Course I aint gon remember page numba or nutn like dat...

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Gilbert might have alluded to Yard as a small island in a sense that the "Mother Country" doesn't care for it, and don't even know where it is. But in the whole scheme of the book, small island is England or more accurately, the English.

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Mi a tell yuh whe im say an yuh a go tell mi whe im might a say??? [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif[/img]

I think Small Island refers to England. But it also refers to Jamaica.

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Nunya</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
I think Small Island refers to England. But it also refers to Jamaica. </div></div>

[img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]
Alrite mi might can sekkle fi dat.

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

aye sah

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Nunya, mek a set yuh up wid some whites. Need fi loosen yuhself a likkle so di reasonin sehshun can gwan a likkle more easy. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

Mi nuh ha no tolerance fi liquor [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/blush.gif[/img] Plus, mi done reason pan dis yah book yah...

Mi wait fi de nex one...

[Magician]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Nunya</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Mi nuh ha no tolerance fi liquor [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/blush.gif[/img] </div></div>

Mek di rumbar all the merrier. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif[/img]

So which book we fi read next an why. [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70402-thinking.gif[/img]

[Nunya]

Re: "Small Island" book discussion

I'on know, but I'm going to be reading 'Emperor of Ocean Park' [img]/forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/70371-jump.gif[/img]

[evanovitch]

Fruit of Lemon by Andrea Levy...juss pick it up

Faith Jackson fixes herself up with a great job in TV and the perfect flatshare. Neither are that perfect, as it happens. Nor are her relations with her overbearing, though always loving family.

Furious and perplexed when her parents suddenly announce their intention to retire back home to Jamaica, Faith makes her own journey there. Here she is immediately enfolded in the endless talk of her Aunt Coral, keeper of a rich cargo of family history.

Through the weave of her aunts storytelling a cast of ancestors unfolds, stretching back to Cuba and Panama, Harlem and Scotland. Funny and compassionate, refreshing and wise, Fruit of the Lemon is a story that passes through London and sweeps over continents



Extract from Andrea Levy's novel third novel:

Fruit of the Lemon

My parents hobby was collecting empty boxes. They'd been doing it for years. Brown cardboard boxes mostly. Fyfees boxes that used to contain bananas from the Caribbean; packets of Daz boxes; toilet roll boxes; Wagon Wheel packet boxes; unspecified boxes; thick double lined boxes; stapled up on the bottom boxes; small handles cut out the side boxes; supermarket boxes; green grocers boxes; stationers boxes.
My mum was the greatest gatherer. She'd come back from the shops with the groceries inside her brown plastic shopping trolley whilst balancing two, sometimes three empty boxes on the top of it. My dad and she would discuss the merits and weaknesses of each box brought into the house. 'You see Wade, what took my eye is that it has a strong bottom that sort of interlocks.' Or, 'But Mildred, I don't think we can have a use for a box six feet long and only eight inches wide'. My dad would store any new boxes in the small cellar of the house with mathematical precision - boxes in boxes all standing on black plastic sheeting to keep out the damp.
It started when we moved from our old council flat to the house in Crouch End. My parents had to, 'pay good money,' to rent boxes from the removal company to place in all our, 'nick-nacks and paddy-wacks'.
'Crooks,' my mum had said as she and my dad had watched the brick-[censored]-house removers in dirty jeans, take back all the boxes when we had finished with them.
Just after that the first box came. It contained the new television. My brother and me watched Dr Who in glorious living colour as my parents cooed over the box. The next one was oblong and had 'hoover' written on the side. 'You never know when a box will come in handy,' my parents would say . 'You just never know.'
The day I moved out of home Dad had struggled into my room with several of his very finest, 'double strength even got a top,' boxes. 'I've got bags' I said, showing him a suitcase and piles of well used, screwed up plastic carrier bags. He looked at me like I was no child of his.
'Bags,' he spat, 'things get mash-up in bags, Faith. Bags break. They not strong. You need a box.' He then banged the bottom of the sturdiest one. 'Strong,' he added, as he picked up a plastic bag from the bed, unravelled it and punched his fist straight through the bottom. He then sucked his teeth. Point made, no more words necessary. I took two of the boxes and he left a happy man.
I thought I'd have hardly anything to put in them. At that time I was leaving behind my childhood. Leaving behind my student days. I had lived at home all through my art college life.The grant authority had uummed and ahhed for months before they decided that my parents didn't live far enough away from the college to warrant them giving me independent status. And for four years I had had to juggle late night parties, sit-ins and randy boyfriends, with 1940's Caribbean strictures. 'Faith, you see you in by eleven - Faith, you can bring a nice girl back with you if she's clean - Faith, I don't want you messing around, you have plenty time for fun when you're older'.
All I had to take were my duvet, my alarm clock with the bells on top and a clanger that whizzed so fast that I cut my finger every time I turned it off. Several assorted empty tins that looked pretty and were given to me as presents so throwing them out as useless junk felt like betrayal. Various bottles of hair oil called things like 'Sta-soft-fro-curl' or 'Afro- sheen-curl', that I never used but thought I might. A record player and a pile of dusty dog-eared records ranging from the Sound of Music and Oliver to Tamela Motowns greatest hits in many volumes.
The boxes had soon filled up and I had to ask my dad for some more. He looked at me and sucked his teeth then started to moan that I was, 'Taking all the good boxes'.
'You offered!' I shouted, then added, 'What do you need them for anyway?' At which my dad did the strangest thing. He blushed. Then silently gave me three more boxes. But as I left the cellar he said, 'Don't come askin' me for any more'.
I was moving into a short life, shared house with friends - two men and a woman. I had thought I was reassuring my mum when I lied a little and said my new flat mate was a young woman. But instead she had said, 'A woman. Be careful of living with women.' I had then looked at her and smiled. I had tipped my head to one side and explained to her that, 'Nowadays, Mum, women have different relationships with each other. Nowadays', I'd elaborated, 'women supported one another - they were sisters'. To which my mum had butted in saying that the worst women she had ever lived with were her sisters and that if women started behaving like sisters then God help the world. She then looked to the portrait of Jesus on the wall and apologised, 'Excuse me Lord'. And went on telling me about the handfuls of hair she used to find in the bedroom she shared with her sisters in Jamaica, pulled out of a head during one of the many sisterly fights. And how her big sister Coral, once punched her so hard that the sweet she was sucking got stuck in her throat. Her mother, apparently, had to grab her by her feet, turn her upside down and slap her on the back until the sweet popped out.
'Be careful of living with women and thank God you only have a brother,' she finally ended.
My brother Carl had said, 'So you moving in with a bird then?' as he helped me carry my boxes to the back of his van.
'No, a woman actually' I said pointedly
'Wos a matter with calling her a bird?'
'Birds,' I said, 'Have wings. They fly. They sit in trees and tweet. Women don't.'
'Bird not good enough for you an all your women's libber friends now. So what do you birds call blokes then?' my big brother had asked with a broad goading grin.
I did not respond. Not immediately. Because when we were young Carl came home one day and insisted that from that day on he wanted to be called by his middle name, Trevor. They used to tease him at school. Carl was an unusual name in the schools of North London. There were no other Carls and boys used to walk behind him in the street shouting his name or calling him Carol amongst other things. So Carl became Trevor and from that day he would answer to nothing else. It took Mum, Dad and me months to remember. Months of calling out, 'Carl dinners ready,' only to hear him say, 'I don't know who you mean, my name is Trevor.' But eventually we all got it.
Then Trevor left school and started work driving a delivery van for a textile company. After two weeks he decided that Trevor no longer suited his image. He wanted to be called Carl again. Carl, he decided, had a certain Superfly, Shaft, don't-mess-with-me-I'm-a-black-man message. He deployed the same tactics, 'Trevor, whose Trevor? - never heard of him'. Until he was once again Carl.
So I didn't have to say anything about birds. I just smiled and said that we call blokes Trevor and he shut up.
My dad had stood by the door to watch me take the last bits of my belongings out of the house. He had hedge clippers in his hand and he stood in front of the perfect clipped privet hedge in the garden, pretending to cut at stray leaves, like a barber clipping over the top of a well cut head of hair. Then my mum came out wearing pink rubber gloves and carrying a duster and a can of Mr Sheen which she sprayed onto the front door and began to wipe at vigorously. They had needed something to do as they watched me leave
It wasn't how they would have liked their only daughter to go. They would have preferred to see me swathed from head to toe in white lace, with hand stitched on pearls and sequins. Standing in between my bridesmaids - one my age and two little ones - dressed in lemon yellow satin with white lace trim. Our skirts ballooning out in the sun as I stood with my back to them ready to throw my bouquet into the cheering, laughing crowd. My new husband - a christian with family from Jamaica or one of the 'small islands' - watching-on in a dark suit with wine coloured cummabund and a frilly shirt. Then the two of us moving happily down the human-arch of men standing holding paintbrushes aloft like swords.
'Marry a decorator like your dad and you'll never have to worry about paint,' Mum had always advised. Every year she steeped several bags of dry fruit in rum ready to make a wedding cake at a moments notice. And every year she looked at me accusingly as she tipped out the jar of alcoholic sultanas and currents and made another Christmas cake instead.
'Ah Faith, what can we do with you? You just go your own sweet way,' my parents had both decided a long time before. 'Your own sweet way.'

[CeaBee]

Re: Fruit of Lemon by Andrea Levy...juss pick it up

This sounds interesting...have u read it yet?