Andrew recommended this to me a while ago and I finally had the chance to read it! I was worried at first, because his last two have been, while very good, incredibly depressing, but this was a whole lot happier and more hopeful than White Teeth by Zadie Smith and The Autobiography of Malcolm X, so I can keep on with his recommendations! It’s interesting because Fruit of the Lemon does deal with the same sort of issues as those other two books — namely, what it means to be not-white in a society that favors being white, but it also marries this idea with a young woman’s coming of age. Faith has just graduated college and is trying to figure out who she is and what her place is in the world, which is made even more complicated by the fact that it’s harder for her to get the jobs that she wants because of racism and it’s harder for her to embrace her culture when she doesn’t have any friends that come from the same background as her.

 

I appreciated Levy’s ability to take serious concepts while also bringing humor and levity into it. Faith is living in a house with two guys and another girl, and the description of the house is hilarious, grotesque, and all too real of just-graduated-from-college young adults. The hygiene, decorating skills, and overall responsibility skills just aren’t quite there yet, but they’re trying to figure it out; Faith’s dad coming by the house because he was “in the area” is a hilarious moment because of this.

 

The racism in Faith’s workplace was well done — she wanted to be a dresser instead of working in the costume department of a TV station, cataloging costumes. Someone told her they never have “colored” people working those jobs, and when the hiring committee started being unfair to her, she mentioned that and eventually got the job she wanted, but they don’t actually really let her do the job, saying that no shows needed anyone to help dress the actors at the moment. This was much more interesting than Faith not getting the job outright, because it was harder for her to find something to be upset about — she got the job she wanted, they just didn’t need her to do those responsibilities right now. And then, when they do let her work, it’s to dress up dolls for a kid’s show and not actual actors.

 

However, this novel shines with Faith goes to Jamaica and learns about her family. More than anything, this book is about how people become who they are, how they relate to their families, and how family can tie everything together. I loved seeing Faith trace her family tree as each new story about a new relative is told to her, and even though the reader doesn’t get to see much of Faith’s transformation, I felt her becoming more comfortable with herself and who she is with each branch she adds to the tree. Fruit of the Lemon is a beautiful story about family, identity, and culture, and it’s able to tell an important story while still including humorous and touching moments. Along with my husband, I highly recommend reading this book.

I know quite a bit about the war years (~1915-50) in Britain, but I learned more reading this book that covers the experience of Jamaican British immigrants and soldiers during and after WWII. The most surprising historical information I got was how Britain coped with Yankee soldiers expecting Brits to enforce "Jim Crow" segregation in the small towns in which they were stationed. Britain didn't have segregation before that and many local townspeople, while they didn't exactly think of black Brits as "one of ours," still felt it was uncivilized to segregate. But the American soldiers were adamant and this caused tension and fights. Regardless of the treatment they received, many Jamaican soldiers, once demobbed home, realized that there wasn't much for them in their home country and returned to England to seek a better life, only to find that prejudice was stronger after the war. Tight storytelling told from several perspectives. The author is able to successfully inhabit the minds of characters ranging from a conservative white soldier, to a Jamaican woman proud of her schooling, to an easy-going Jamaican man trying to navigate an unfamiliar and hostile environment. It's easy to sympathize with them all.

Not the normal book that I would read, but took a punt as it was a winner of the orange prize and Whitbread prize.It concerns a girl born in the UK to Jamaican immigrants, and how she grows up with her brother. She is generally getting along fine, has a good job, is living with other people in a house, before coming up against the horrors of racial violence. Shee suffers a breakdown, and her parent decide to send her to Jamaica to spend time with the family that never left there.Whilst there, her aunt takes her under her wing and tells had about the family that she knows nothing of.Overall it wasn't too bad, the writing flows nicely, and the story is ok, but I wasn't keen on the way that the book is sectioned quite abruptly as it doesn't hang together as well as it could.

Small Island is a good, solid book in nearly every way, although for me it didn’t have that something extra that would take it up to 5 stars.

The frame story is set in London, 1948: a black Jamaican couple, Hortense and Gilbert, move to England and rent a room from a white woman, Queenie, whose husband Bernard mysteriously failed to return from WWII. Most of the book traces each of the four main characters’ backstories, up until the last hundred pages set in 1948.

Small Island is quite an interesting piece of historical fiction, examining the era when England started to change from mostly homogenous to multicultural, and all the friction that went with that. The harsh realities of immigrant life and the ugliness of racism take center stage, particularly the latter, as American racism (segregation and hostility) is contrasted with British racism (less institutionalized but no less hostile) and Jamaican racism (subtler, based on the shade of one’s skin, but pernicious nonetheless). The book is thoughtful in its treatment of these themes: everyone involved has virtues and flaws, and there’s a powerful bit at the end that shows how harmful racism can be to white people too.

The characters themselves are fairly well-developed and believable. This is one of the few books where I don’t think the author made a terrible mistake in having all four characters each narrate their own story in the first person. While you can tell all four voices come from the same author, there are enough differences in their vocabularies and styles that this comes off well, and each personality comes through in the narration. Levy also does an excellent job of showing those personalities rather than simply describing them: an example other authors could learn from. We don't have to be told that Hortense is prim, Queenie well-meaning but patronizing, or Bernard rigid. But while the characters are distinct (from one another and from other fictional characters; I appreciate the avoidance of the generically-inoffensive type), at times they felt a bit consciously constructed, their personalities not quite fitting together. Gilbert, for instance, says several times that he wants to study law, but he seems to have that desire merely so that obstacles can be thrown in his way; he doesn’t ever show actual interest in law, or enjoy reading, or display any other characteristics that would make sense of that ambition. But still, the characters are interesting people whose backstories I wanted to read, and their relationships are complex. Both marriages are made from convenience, and it was especially interesting to see how everyone dealt with that.

Levy also does an excellent job evoking the settings--the Blitz has been done a lot in literature, for example, but this depiction stands out. The dialogue is good, and the use of Jamaican patois lends color without being impenetrable. The writing is smooth and the ending appropriately bittersweet. So while this isn’t up to 5 stars with me, it certainly gets a solid 4.

This was a huge disappointment to me.
I found the depiction of the black Jamaican slaves positively insulting. Their plight and their path toward freedom is a central theme, but they need not be presented so degradingly.

The writing is wordy and convoluted. Get to the point. I do not want to wade through all these words to get the gist of the story.

The characters, they were all very unappealing. Not just unappealing, downright despicable. Whites and blacks alike.

If you are looking for a smidgen of humor, don't look here.

Here is what bothered me the most. Every action and even every sentence reflected a hidden, subversive intention. Nobody and nothing that happened is presented honestly. Every action had a hidden meaning, always dishonest and often cruel or mean. I say, if you hate someone, tell them and/or give them a punch, but do not do something that appears friendly but in fact causes pain. I want the meanness and anger upfront, not hidden and not disguised!

I finished the book. After many lies and false starts, I eventually found out how the people were related and what happened to each, but what a long, tedious and unpleasant journey it was!