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Small Island
Fruit of the Lemon
Never far from Nowhere
Every light in the house burnin'
Small Island
It
is 1948 in an England that is still shaken by war. At 21 Nevern Street, London,
Queenie Bligh takes into her house lodgers who have recently arrived from
Jamaica. She feels she has no choice. Her husband, Bernard, who she married
to escape her dreary upbringing on a farm in the Midlands, was posted to
India with the RAF during the war, but when the conflict was over he did
not return. What else could she do?Among her tenants are Gilbert and his new wife Hortense. Gilbert Josesph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England after the war he finds himself treated very differently now that he is no longer in a blue uniform. It is desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door.
Hortense shared Gilbert’s dream of leaving Jamaica and coming to England to start a better life – that’s why she married him. But when she at last joins her husband, she is shocked by London’s shabbiness and horrified at the way the English live. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was.
Queenie’s neighbours do not approve of her choice of tenants, and neither would her husband, were he there. England may be recovering from a war but at 21 Nevern Street it has only just begun.
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Fruit of the Lemon
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.
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Never far from Nowhere
Never
far from nowhere tells the story of two sisters, Olive and Vivien, born
in London to Jamaican parents and brought up on a council estate. They
go to the same grammar school. Vivien's life becomes a chaotic mix of
friendships, youth club, skinhead violence, A levels, discos and college.
Olive three years older and a skin shade darker, has a very different
story to tell...Click here to read an extract
Back
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Every light in the house burnin'
'Better
opportunity' - that's why Angela's dad sailed to England from Jamaica
in 1948 on the Empire Windrush. Six months later her mum joined
him in his one room in Earl's Court.
Angela is the youngest of the Jacobs' four children. The book opens as her father becomes seriously ill and starts to move unsteadily though the care of the National Health Service. As she tries to help her mother, Angela begins to relive her childhood years spent on a council estate in Highbury.
These are the days of regulation navy school knickers, games of tin-tan-tommy out in the yard; holidays at Pontin's; church on Sundays; teenagers; complex hair-dos; relatives from 'back home'; occasional, half understood, half remembered slights.
With humour and compassion the world of the Caribbean immigrant family is opened up, showing how two generations lived and adapted to a fast-changing London. The finely drawn portraits of the parents, their dignity and solid values, contrast painfully with their drab surroundings in a London that is not always welcoming.
Click here to read an extract
'Better
opportunity' - that's why Angela's dad sailed to England from Jamaica
in 1948 on the Empire Windrush. Six months later her mum joined
him in his one room in Earl's Court.Angela is the youngest of the Jacobs' four children. The book opens as her father becomes seriously ill and starts to move unsteadily though the care of the National Health Service. As she tries to help her mother, Angela begins to relive her childhood years spent on a council estate in Highbury.
These are the days of regulation navy school knickers, games of tin-tan-tommy out in the yard; holidays at Pontin's; church on Sundays; teenagers; complex hair-dos; relatives from 'back home'; occasional, half understood, half remembered slights.
With humour and compassion the world of the Caribbean immigrant family is opened up, showing how two generations lived and adapted to a fast-changing London. The finely drawn portraits of the parents, their dignity and solid values, contrast painfully with their drab surroundings in a London that is not always welcoming.
Click here to read an extract
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| Small Island |
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ISBN:0-7553-0750-X Paperback |
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Small Island
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ISBN:0755307496 Hardback
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Fruit of the Lemon |
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ISBN:0747261148 Paperback
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Never Far from Nowhere
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ISBN:0747252130 Paperback
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