Customer Reviews
Fast moving easy read - By: Morgan Chan, 29 Jul 2010 
This book starts off with a jamaican girl callled Hortense arriving on the doorsteps of an English landlady callled Queenie.The other characters are Gilbert Joseph who is Hortense Husband & Bernard who is Queenies husband.It goes back into the past of each of the 4 characters & is centred around the racism against blacks in England at the time & then brings you to 1948 the present time when alll meet.
At times it makes you laugh when the writer tries to bring out the character of each person.E.G.Hortense is a haute taute Jamacain women,Queenie is a lonely typical middle class English women whose husband goes to war, Bernard is a real goose & Gilbert is a charming Black Jamaican.
Enjoyed this book as quite funny but also brought out the realism of racism at the timeduring & after the war.
An amazing read - By: Cooking Mama, 26 Jul 2010 
Read this as part of a book club, but having seen the BBC adaptation was keen to read it anyway. It is excellently written & the characters come to life through her words.
a different perspective - By: suziel, 09 Jul 2010 
a good juxtaposition of black & white attitudes from the England of the 50s. I loved the read but felt it was a little rushed at the end & I would have like a bit more detail as to why Queenie got into a relationship with a black man which was a very strange thing to do in that day & age. Don't let that stop you from reading this book.
Disappointing - By: Mrs. A. L. Maddocks, 05 Jul 2010 
I went into my local bookshop a number of times & picked this book up on each occasion & read the back cover.
I eventuallly decided to buy this book & was looking forward to reading it & finding out alll about "prejudice".
I tried so hard to persevere with this book, but unfortunately I gave up after 270 pages.
I just found it so slow. Very little was happening to justify the amount of pages I'd read. If there was a bit more content, then I am sure this book would be very good.
I also couldn't help but feel that this book was semi-biographical. Well, that's how it appeared to me while I was reading it.
Shame. Could've been so much better.
For once, a prize-winner that is well worth reading - By: Phil O'Sofa, 06 Jun 2010 Told from the point of view of four different people, this is a very entertaining story about the disillusionment of two young Jamaicans who have high expectations of their 'mother country', only to find that the Britain of the 1940s is a dreary place of hardship & deep-seated prejudice.
Gilbert joins the RAF & heads to England in the war, but soon finds himself the object of racism. Despite this, he returns to London after the war, thinking opportunities will be greater than in Jamaica. He gets a job as a driver for the post office, but bigoted colleagues give him a hard time.
Hortense, a young & haughty Jamaican woman, marries Gilbert so that she also can live in England, confident that as a qualified teacher she will easily find work. She doesn't, of course.
Queenie is an enlightened young Londoner who rents a room to Gilbert, thinking that her dull husband, Bernard, has gone missing in the war. When he eventuallly returns from India, Bernard is outraged to find these 'darkies' in his house.
Ms Levy is extremely good at drawing these four very different characters. I felt that Gilbert & Queenie were very likeable, Hortense okay but slightly irritating with her stuck-up attitude, & Bernard quite unpleasant, which he's supposed to be I suppose, but I did think that much of Bernard's rather tedious narrative could have been cut without any great loss to the story.
Considering the length of the book (530 pages) I found it an easy & quick read, well-written & full of humour, with quite a good twist at the end. Far more deserving of its prizes than most.
