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Intro. Small Island Summary. Next. Prologue: Queenie. The novel opens as Queenie, one of the protagonists, visits the British Empire Exhibition as a young girl. She goes with her parents, who run a butchery together, and is chaperoned by two of their employees, Emily and Graham.
- Characters
Need help on characters in Andrea Levy's Small Island? Check...
- Chapter 56: Gilbert
That night, Gilbert folds himself into the armchair to sleep...
- Chapter 47: Queenie
Need help with Chapter 47: Queenie in Andrea Levy's Small...
- Characters
Intro. Plot. Summary & Analysis. Themes. Quotes. Characters. Symbols. Theme Viz. Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Small Island makes teaching easy. Ask LitCharts AI: The answer to your questions. Get instant explanations to your questions about anything we cover. Powered by LitCharts content and AI. Learn More. Small Island Study Guide.
- Narrative Devices
- Chronology
- Comic Devices
The novel is narrated from multiple narrative voices, giving the central characters the chance to speak for themselves and tell their own stories in an intimate way. Furthermore, each character's narration has a different narrative stylethat is distinctively their own.
Small Island is told in a non-linear order. In fact, chapters set in the past take up the majority of the text, highlighting the importance of understanding the past in order to understand the present, and why people come to be and act a certain way.
Small Island has many moments of levity, which balance out the novel's serious and tragic episodes, such as the death of Arthur Bligh and the struggles faced by Hortense and Gilbert because of the colour of their skin. Levy uses comic devices such as ironyand comic misunderstandings to mock folly and prejudice and to highlight the inconsistencies i...
- Andrea Levy
- Historical fiction, postcolonial literature
- 2004
- Postmodernism, twenty-first century fiction
Andrea Levy’s award-winning novel Small Island (2004) is primarily set in England in 1948, following World War II. It is told through four different perspectives; alternating chapters are...
Jan 1, 2004 · Small Island. Andrea Levy. 4.01. 34,981 ratings2,330 reviews. Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class.
- (34.9K)
- 2004
- Andrea Levy
- Paperback
Plot. The story is centred on four main characters: Hortense, Queenie, Gilbert, and Bernard. It focuses on the diaspora of Jamaican immigrants during and after World War II. Trying to escape economic hardship on their own "small island," they have moved to England, the Mother Country, for which the men have fought during the war.
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2004. Plot Summary. Small Island, Andrea Levy’s 2005 historical novel, is told from the perspective of four characters: Queenie, Hortense, Gilbert, and Bernard. The point of view shifts frequently between these characters and across the years, spanning from just after World War I to 1948.
