Schemes

There are loads of organisations and initiatives around at the moment, set up to encourage everyone to simultaneously read the same book, or from a set list. It's a peculiar phenomenon, and I'm not really sure what to think. Maybe more on that another time.

At the beginning of this year the Small Island Read took place. As part of the commemorative events taking place marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, it's predictable that the allocated book will have something to do with Black/White relations - and it does. The Black/White tangle is looked at in a refreshingly sideways way, though, which was a nice discovery; it would have been so easy to shove something like To Kill a Mockingbird in people's faces or, I don't know, Alice Walker (two birds, one stone - Black America and women - score). But the book chosen was Small Island by Andrea Levy.

Small Island follows four people - two black, two white - through a part of their lives. Based around the Second World War, the narrative is chronologically mixed and - because coincidence and connections are inevitable - parts of each characters' stories are told by other characters. It's simple, but quite clever. I was expecting a rehash of the ol' Black-Americans-struggling-against-White-Americans tale which, though important, has been done. Levy, though, writes about something different: she takes on the two islands of Jamaica and Britain (well, England). Only small sections of the book involve Americans, for which I'm thankful. Between the four primary characters we catch glimpses of Jamaican upbringing, England's Home Front, British involvement in India, and the effect of a steady influx of 'foreigners' into England. It's a new twist on the story it's so easy to think we know all about, and a good one. The writing is mostly fresh and original, and when it does get stodgy or predictable Levy is quick to move it on. She leaves quite a lot unwritten (particularly emotions, motives and thoughts), and whereas in some books this just makes the characters flat and unconvincing, Levy says enough to keep them alive - it's up to us to try to work them out, which suits me fine; that is, the right things are left unsaid. The ending is too neatly tied, and for that reason (I think) I found the final fifth of the book irritating - there was too much striving for a rounded end, too many resolutions and unlikely changes of heart. But so few books have fantastic endings that it hardly matters much to the whole. The book is good, surprising, sufficiently challenging and also pertinent. If you can do a Jamaican accent in your head (or aloud), all the better!