The blurb and the plaudits didn’t entice, but to have continued to overlook this book would have been my loss. Small Island follows the lives of two couples, one from Jamaica the other from England, focussing on their experiences during World War II and the years that followed when Empire faded into Commonwealth, and Jamaicans moving to England became immigrants rather than fellow war veterans and members of the Empire.
The strong and individual voices of the characters make this a powerful, thought-provoking novel, when it could easily have been far more heavy-handed and less convincing.
Buy it: Amazon link
Now, do I go back to give The Star of the Sea another go…. or abandon that ship for another of the recent selection from the Barbican library’s fiction section…..?