THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

Set in London England, 1940’s, post WW II, one hopeful Londoner, one disillusioned Londoner, and two wishful Jamaicans, learn to fit their dreams into the peg of reality.  The story moves back and forth through time, through the voices of Queenie, Bernard, Hortense and Gilbert.

London:  Bernard, Queenis’e husband, enlisted in the RAF.  Queenie Bligh waits for her husband’s return from the war and rents rooms in her war tattered home for extra income.  Queenie also rents her rooms to Jamaicans, to the resentment of her bigoted neighbors.

Jamaica:  Hortense, a dynamic, educated, light-skinned Jamaican woman, fell in love with her cousin, Michael Roberts, who committed the disgraceful sin of adultery with her best friend.  Michael Roberts escapes disgrace by enlisting in the RAF.

Jamaica:  When introduced to Gilbert Joseph, Hortense, thinking Joseph an ambitious man, one with plans but no money, believing a bright future awaits her, offers to loan Gilbert her hard-earned savings in exchange for marriage, and a life in England, the land of her dreams.

London:  While Queenie contends with Bernard’s absence, she shares a brief love affair with an officer in the RAF.

 

The author, through lively, personable characters weaves a beautiful and sensitive story of different cultures, of love and relationships, of disappointment and hope, of the demands of war, and of the effects of racism. 

In first person, each expresses the dreams and expectations they carry, while relating the heartbreak of their unanticipated disappointments.  The novel is emotional, eventful, wonderfully descriptive in matters of the heart and the simmering relationship between Hortense and Gilbert is beautifully told.

Recommended!