Book Club Guide

Small Island

by Andrea Levy · 2004 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The Windrush generation and what Britain promised and withheld
Queenie's specific kindness — and what it costs her
The gap between the Empire's myth and its reality

About this book

Two couples — the Jamaican migrants Gilbert and Hortense, newly arrived in London in 1948, and the English couple Queenie and Bernard — share a house in the years after the Second World War. Levy's Orange Prize-winning novel asks what Britain promised the Windrush generation and what it actually gave them, exploring the gap between the coloniser's idea of England and its daily reality.

Published in 2004, Small Island won the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Novel Award. Levy drew on her parents' immigration from Jamaica to England in 1948 and 1950, and on interviews with Windrush generation arrivals.

Discussion questions

The novel has four narrators — Gilbert, Hortense, Queenie, Bernard. How does Levy use these perspectives — and what does each narrator fail to see that another provides?
Gilbert served in the RAF and arrived expecting the country he had been taught to love. How does Levy show his disappointment — and what is she saying about the specific betrayal of the Windrush generation?
Hortense's relationship to class and respectability drives her narrative. How does Levy use this — sympathetically, critically, or with the ironic love of someone who understands what respectability means to someone whose dignity is constantly threatened?
Queenie helps Gilbert and Hortense in ways that cost her dearly. How does Levy develop her character — and what does her particular kind of decency say about what ordinary goodness can and cannot provide?
Small Island won the Orange Prize. What does it do that earns this recognition — and how does it compare to White Teeth and Brick Lane as accounts of the postwar immigrant experience?