Small Island
Do you want to pick it up at the bookstore?
Mainland Spain
- ISBN13 9781472211064
- ISBN10 1472211065
- Type Book
- Pages 533
- Published 2004
- Language English
- Bookbinding Paperback
Sections
English LiteratureSmall Island
Do you want to pick it up at the bookstore?
Mainland Spain
Book Details
It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh's neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn't know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. What else can she do? Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently. It's desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door. Gilbert's wife Hortense, too, had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. But when she joins him she is shocked to find London shabby, decrepit, and far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was.