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Book summary and reviews of Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy

Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy

Fruit of the Lemon

A Novel

by Andrea Levy

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Jan 2007
    352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

....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." - PW.

"A somewhat abrupt ending and slightly flat secondary characters hinder but do not spoil this otherwise solid effort." - Library Journal.
"An enjoyable, deft combination of humor and telling observation on owning one's race and roots. " - Kirkus.

This information about Fruit of the Lemon was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Andrea Levy Author Biography

Photo: Angus Muir

Andrea Levy was a child of the Windrush. She is the daughter of one of the pioneers who sailed from Jamaica to England on the Empire Windrush ship. Her father and later her mother came to Britain in 1948 in search of a better life. For the British born Levy this meant that she grew up black in a very white England. This experience gave her an unusual perspective on the country of her birth – neither feeling totally part of the society nor a total outsider.

In her novel Small Island she put this perspective to work. She examined the experiences of those of her father’s generation who returned to Britain after being in the RAF during the Second World War. But more than just the story of the Jamaicans who came looking for a new life in the Mother Country, she used her ...

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Author Interview
Link to Andrea Levy's Website

Name Pronunciation
Andrea Levy: lee-vee

Other books by Andrea Levy at BookBrowse
  • The Long Song jacket
  • Small Island jacket
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