Small Island

The prologue introduces Hortense, a young Jamaican girl, who holds three dreams: to marry Michael, to travel to faraway England, and to become a teacher. Her hopes set the tone for a diaspora story about ambition and constraint.

The narrative shifts to London, where Queenie arrives from Yorkshire and begins life with her aunt, working in a shop. After her aunt dies, she marries Bernard in a bid to escape pig-farming poverty and secure a better future.

World War II begins to reshape lives as Michael leaves Jamaica to join the Royal Air Force following a scandal. His departure pulls Hortense and Queenie into the upheavals of Britain’s war effort.

Bernard impulsively joins the RAF, leaving Queenie to look after his shell-shocked father. Queenie faces hardship on her own as the war intensifies.

Queenie lets her house to soldiers passing through, turning her home into wartime quarters. Three airmen arrive, including a Jamaican, and the men bring a mix of romance and tension.

One night Queenie shares a forbidden encounter with Michael, but Hortense misidentifies the returning man as Michael. The man she greets is Gilbert Joseph, who resembles Michael. This moment launches Gilbert’s wartime arc.

Gilbert enlists in the RAF and is posted in Yorkshire, where he meets Queenie, who initially mistakes him for Michael. They form a close, platonic friendship that provokes resentment among American soldiers.

A brawl involving Gilbert, Queenie, and American soldiers erupts, ending in gunfire and the death of Queenie’s father-in-law. The violence underscores racial and wartime tensions.

After the war, Gilbert returns to Jamaica, where he struggles to find opportunities and longs to return to England. He meets Hortense again, fueling jealousy and a complicated triangle of promises and debts.

Desperate to reach England, Hortense offers Gilbert money for his fare in exchange for marriage and a promise to send for her later. They lodge with Queenie, who has to fend for herself since Bernard never returned from the war.

In England, Hortense and Queenie confront racism and discrimination as they navigate work, love, and survival. Hortense begins to fall in love with Gilbert as he and Queenie’s circle deepens, while Queenie revisits memories of Michael.

Queenie, facing a paternalist and racist society, decides to entrust the baby Michael to Hortense and Gilbert rather than keep him. She gives them a photo and a little money to help them start life. The baby’s darker skin confirms the father’s identity.

The scene leaps forward to the present day, revealing that Queenie and Michael’s baby is now the story’s narrator with grandchildren. When one grandchild asks who Queenie was, the narrator answers simply that she is his mother.