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Overview
From Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year and the Best of the Best Orange Prize, comes a story of one woman and two islands.
Faith Jackson knows little about her parents' lives before they moved to England. Happy to be starting her first job in the costume department at BBC television, and to be sharing a house with friends, Faith is full of hope and expectation. But when her parents announce that they are moving "home" to Jamaica, Faith's fragile sense of her identity is threatened. Angry and perplexed as to why her parents would move to a country they so rarely mention, Faith becomes increasingly aware of the covert and public racism of her daily life, at home and at work.
At her parents' suggestion, in the hope it will help her to understand where she comes from, Faith goes to Jamaica for the first time. There she meets her Aunt Coral, whose storytelling provides Faith with ancestors, whose lives reach from Cuba and Panama to Harlem and Scotland. Branch by branch, story by story, Faith scales the family tree, and discovers her own vibrant heritage, which is far richer and wilder than she could have imagined.
Fruit of the Lemon spans countries and centuries, exploring questions of race and identity with humor and a freshness, and confirms Andrea Levy as one of our most exciting contemporary novelists.
Synopsis
From Andrea Levy, author of Small Island and winner of the Best of the Best Orange Prize, comes a story of one woman and two islands
The New Yorker
Levy’s previous novel, “Small Island,” examined the lives of Jamaican immigrants in Britain in the nineteen-forties. Here she depicts the next generation: the London-born children, circa 1970, who grapple with the knowledge that they are often still considered outsiders. Faith, working as a dresser for children’s television, is a somewhat heedless young woman whose assumption that she lives in a color-blind world is quickly demolished. At work, she finds that the only actors she’s allowed to touch are dolls; soon afterward, she helps a black woman who has been attacked by three youths. Her concerned parents send her to Jamaica, where she slowly recovers a sense of balance and uncovers her family’s past. Faith’s initial obliviousness to prejudice makes the first half of the book feel implausible; but, once the narrative moves to Jamaica, Levy’s remarkable ability to weave a complex, engrossing family history takes over.
Editorials
Uzodinma Iweala
Though Levy writes specifically about black Jamaican Britons and their struggles to be acknowledged as full members of the larger society, her novel illuminates the general situation facing all children of postcolonial immigrants across the West, from the banlieue of France to the Islamic neighborhoods of New York to the Hispanic ghettos of Los Angeles. Throughout the world, unwritten policies of exclusion have created a ferocious discontent among citizens of some nations — who know where they come from, even if they aren’t made to feel as if it’s home.— The New York Times
The New Yorker
Levy’s previous novel, “Small Island,” examined the lives of Jamaican immigrants in Britain in the nineteen-forties. Here she depicts the next generation: the London-born children, circa 1970, who grapple with the knowledge that they are often still considered outsiders. Faith, working as a dresser for children’s television, is a somewhat heedless young woman whose assumption that she lives in a color-blind world is quickly demolished. At work, she finds that the only actors she’s allowed to touch are dolls; soon afterward, she helps a black woman who has been attacked by three youths. Her concerned parents send her to Jamaica, where she slowly recovers a sense of balance and uncovers her family’s past. Faith’s initial obliviousness to prejudice makes the first half of the book feel implausible; but, once the narrative moves to Jamaica, Levy’s remarkable ability to weave a complex, engrossing family history takes over.Publishers Weekly
Levy's follow-up to the Orange Prize- and Whitbread-winning Small Island explores how racism reveals itself to a young British-born woman of Jamaican descent, and how the pain can be healed by knowledge of one's roots. Faith Jackson is having a rough go after college: she's fired from her apprenticeship at a prestigious textile designer's and her parents are planning to move back to Jamaica. Though Faith has experienced racism throughout her life, she begins to fear her ethnicity will hobble her career. As she becomes more aware of subtle forms of racism at her entry level job in the BBC costume department and elsewhere, she witnesses a hate crime and, in its aftermath, is sent to Jamaica by her parents for a helpful holiday. It's there, in the second half of the book, that Faith learns a great deal about her extended family and understands why her parents may want to return. Unfortunately, the tone shifts, and what was effective through understatement becomes a rushed unfolding of her family history, complete with diagrams of who begot whom. The change in voice and the narrator's issues with island life (particularly her frustration with its culture) obscure the more poignant aspects of her newfound knowledge. (Feb.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Library Journal
Levy, winner of the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for Small Island, here delivers a solid meditation on the power of family stories. Faith Jackson begins a career in television with optimism only to be stymied by the casual racism that meets her everywhere in London. Confused, Faith turns to her Jamaican-born parents, but their solutions getting married and going to church don't resonate with her. Trapped between two worldviews, Faith literally takes to her bed until an invitation to visit Jamaica opens a new world of possibilities for her. The rambling, disconnected anecdotes of London life give way to an intricate tapestry of lively family narratives as stories of Faith's ancestors provide a foundation from which she can draw strength. Fans of Zadie Smith will appreciate Levy's explorations of race and class but may find it difficult to sympathize with Faith, whose na vet can be exasperating. A somewhat abrupt ending and slightly flat secondary characters hinder but do not spoil this otherwise solid effort. Recommended for large fiction collections. Leigh Anne Vrabel, Carnegie Lib. of Pittsburgh Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.School Library Journal
Adult/High SchoolThis book is divided into two major sections. First, readers learn about the protagonist, Faith, and her family's life in England, and that her parents had emigrated from Jamaica on a banana boat, arriving at West India Dock on Guy Fawkes Night and really only knowing England from what they'd learned in school. Life is not exactly as they'd planned it, but over time Wade and Mildred adjust to their new home, get jobs, buy a house, and start a family. They are proud of their children, especially Faith's work in the costume department at BBC, but Faith, who is a credible but sheltered young adult, isn't quite so pleased, as she becomes aware of the hidden and public racism all around her. She decides to visit Jamaica, and the book moves into its second section. Faith meets the family she has known only through letters, photos, and the stories her parents have shared with her. Listening to her Aunt Coral's tales provides her with insight into her parents' lives that she never could have imagined. She makes connections with the people and places of their youth and returns to England with a different perception of her mum, her dad, and herself. None of Faith's Jamaican relationships seems to be deep, but readers sense that maturity is just around the corner, perhaps once she reconnects with her family in Britain.
—Joanne LigamariCopyright 2006 Reed Business Information.