Andrea Levy - Fruit of the Lemon Tree

Review by Babs Simpson on show 28th Jan 2010.
This was written in 1999 sometime before her award-winning and highly praised Small Island. It is the story of Faith Jackson, daughter of Jamaican immigrant parents, Wade and Mildred, and sister of Carl. The family lives in London and Faith has just landed herself a job with the BBC and is sharing a house with three others - one girl and two boys (although her strict parents believe they are all girls). Faith has been to college to train in art and designing and is employed by the BBC in the Costume department, cataloguing full descriptions of the costumes worn in productions down to the tiniest detail.
But she knows herself to be capable of more and applies to be a Dresser although she is warned by a colleague that there has never been a black Dresser at the BBC - some of the actors might not like it. The trouble starts when she is interviewed and is conscious of her colour, almost for the first time. However, she gets appointed and is of course delighted until she has been working in her new capacity for some time before she is asked to help with a production, and discovers they want her to 'dress' teddy bears in a childrens programme.
She realises they have appointed her as a token black person to keep their inclusiveness target up, but she will probably never be accepted to work as she knows she can and deserves to.
This, added to various small instances of racism which she has hardly been aware of before coupled with the prospect of her parents going back to the West Indies, causes Faith to become very depressed and eventually her mother arranged for her to take a holiday in Jamaica, staying with her Aunt Coral who she has never met.
The second half of the book is set in her aunt's small house outside Kingston and over the course of the next few weeks, Faith meets both her parents families and is told stories about her ancestors going back to the days when slaves were used in the sugar cane industry.
Each chapter contains Faith's family tree, with each new strand added on and it makes for absolutely fascinating reading. she learns about her parents childhoods as well as finding her roots and is accepted as one of their own by many aunts, cousins and friends of her parents.
The picture of Jamaican life is vividly and brilliantly drawn and the many different characters and their stories are beautifully written.
Andrea Levy is an exceptional author. She has a lovely lightness of touch when describing potentially unpleasant incidents and can find an amusing side to almost everything.
Racism is of course, at the back of many incidents but it is never forced down the readers throat and there's absolutely no political correctness involved in any of it.
If you enjoyed Small Island and i cannot imagine many people didn's, you will love Fruit of the Lemon equally. It is charming, informative, funny story and deserves just as wide a readership as Small Island.