Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
Ebook385 pages6 hours
A citromfa gyümölcse
By Andrea Levy
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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About this ebook
Faith Jackson alig tud valamit szüleinek Angliába érkezése előtti életéről. Inkább az foglalkoztatja, milyen szerencsés: felvették a BBC-televízió jelmeztervezői osztályára, elköltözött otthonról, és új barátokkal bútorozott össze saját házukban. Az előtte álló napok és hónapok boldognak és várakozással telinek tűnnek. Ám amikor a szülei bejelentik, hogy „hazaköltöznek” Jamaicába, Faith hirtelen elveszíti lába alól a talajt. Egész addigi élete, személyisége összeomlani látszik. A lány dühös és nem érti, miért akarnának szülei egy olyan helyen élni, amelyről addig szinte említést sem tettek. Mindeközben az angliai lét sötétebb oldalával is kénytelen szembenézni: Faith egyre élesebben látja a mindennapjait átható rasszizmus jeleit, a munkahelyén és az otthonában egyaránt.
A szülei javaslatára életében először elutazik Jamaica szigetére, abban a reményben, hogy megérti, honnan származik, s ezáltal magára talál. Itt ismeri meg Coral nagynénjét, akinek színes előadásában életre kelnek Faith ősei, képzeletben bejárva Kubát és Panamát, a Harlemet és Skóciát. Történetről történetre, ágról ágra rajzolódik ki a fiatal nő családfája és az az élettel teli örökség, amely sokkal gazdagabb és fontosabb, mint azt valaha is hitte volna.
Andrea Levy (A hosszú dal, Parányi sziget), a neves Orange-díj nyertese egy nő és két sziget pillanatait meséli el. Regénye több évszázadon és több országon átívelő történet, a faj és az identitás kérdéseit finom humorral, egészen új oldalról mutatja be.
A szülei javaslatára életében először elutazik Jamaica szigetére, abban a reményben, hogy megérti, honnan származik, s ezáltal magára talál. Itt ismeri meg Coral nagynénjét, akinek színes előadásában életre kelnek Faith ősei, képzeletben bejárva Kubát és Panamát, a Harlemet és Skóciát. Történetről történetre, ágról ágra rajzolódik ki a fiatal nő családfája és az az élettel teli örökség, amely sokkal gazdagabb és fontosabb, mint azt valaha is hitte volna.
Andrea Levy (A hosszú dal, Parányi sziget), a neves Orange-díj nyertese egy nő és két sziget pillanatait meséli el. Regénye több évszázadon és több országon átívelő történet, a faj és az identitás kérdéseit finom humorral, egészen új oldalról mutatja be.
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Reviews for A citromfa gyümölcse
Rating: 3.4782609239130435 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
92 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Not the normal book that I would read, but took a punt as it was a winner of the orange prize and Whitbread prize.
It concerns a girl born in the UK to Jamaican immigrants, and how she grows up with her brother. She is generally getting along fine, has a good job, is living with other people in a house, before coming up against the horrors of racial violence. Shee suffers a breakdown, and her parent decide to send her to Jamaica to spend time with the family that never left there.
Whilst there, her aunt takes her under her wing and tells had about the family that she knows nothing of.
Overall it wasn't too bad, the writing flows nicely, and the story is ok, but I wasn't keen on the way that the book is sectioned quite abruptly as it doesn't hang together as well as it could. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I'm finding it difficult to describe this novel in ways that don't make it sound worthy but dull - it is anything but. It's lively, humorous, touching and effortless reading. Bear that in mind as you read further on.'Fruit of the Lemon' is set initially in London in a time that is probably the late 1970s but is somewhat ill-defined. The latter half of the book is set in Jamaica at the same time. It's the story of Faith Jackson and ultimately the story - or stories - of her family, in London, Jamaica and elsewhere in the world. The telling rests on how these stories are known or revealed to Faith and how they affect her sense of identity, although little is made explicit about the effects on Faith herself. It's just as much about the effects on the reader.Faith is one of two children of Jamaican immigrants to Britain who came in the wave encouraged by Britain in the 1950s to fill jobs in the public sector, transport and health particularly. Faith grows up knowing very little about her parents families or backgrounds, but isn't greatly concerned by this. She lives in a multi-cultural world typical of her generation in London, but is occasionally made sharply aware that she is black in a white world. Her family at times also express concerns that she doesn't mix 'with her own kind', sharing a flat as she does with three white contemporaries. They also aren't overjoyed to discover that two of her flatmates are men. But her experience isn't single-dimensional - she finds acceptance where she doesn't expect it as well as rejection.A crisis in her life leads to the suggestion of a holiday with family in Jamaica. It's a place which she initially finds strange in many ways, and some there feel the same about her. Staying with her mother's sister Coral she discovers the island and through Coral and others hears more and more about her family, where they have gone and (perhaps) why. The process of discovery is made explicit through periodic appearances of a family tree throughout the book, one that begins with Faith, her parents, and her brother and ends up too complicated to recall without the diagrams to refer to.Some of the tone and setting will be familiar to anyone who has read Levy's more well-known later novel "Small Island". The same lightness of touch, nuanced view of identity and culture and humour are all there. This book is a deserved winner of two prizes (the Whitbread and the Orange) and well worth a read. You'll find it much easier than eating a lemon.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a story about discovering one’s roots. The hero is a London girl whose parents emigrated from Jamaica. All her life she’s been conscious of her differences, experiencing a vague tension that only occasionally becomes blatant racism. When she is in danger of becoming overwhelmed by it, her parents send her back to Jamaica. There she finds a place where she fits, and a whole lot more branches to her family tree. It’s light, funny, clearly observed, never shallow, and well worth reading.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The first half of this book took place in London and the second half in Jamaica. The London part seemed way too long and bored me. I got really excited when I first started reading the part in Jamaica, but then there were too many family stories to keep track of and it just seemed to turn into a type of personal diary for someone to keep track of their family history.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I picked this book, Fruit of the Lemon by Andrea Levy, off of the library shelf last week, and it looked promising and different from the mainstream genre books. It's the story of Faith, a woman born in England of parents who emigrated from Jamaica. With first-person narration, we learn the story of Faith's life in England, how she grew up never hearing about her parents' life in Jamaica, and becoming aware of the way racial prejudices affect her life. I liked Faith's voice and I was impressed at how beautifully Levy kept the feeling of the story light and even funny at times, while simultaneously addressing serious issues. And then Faith's parents decide that they want to return to Jamaica, and Faith takes a trip there for her first experience of Jamaican life and culture. Great jumping off point, right? I had high hopes. But for me, here's where the novel lost focus. Faith's voice, so clear in the first half of the novel, was diluted by sections in which the stories of Faith's Jamaican relatives were told to Faith. If only Levy had shown us Faith discovering these aspects of Jamaican life in a more natural way -- this structure only frustrated me, as it took me away from the narrator I'd come to care about AND seemed so heavy-handed in the way it dumped out different character's histories at me. Sadly, the part I wanted the most -- Faith's reactions to the new place, her new sense of her own history, and how that made her view and approach her parents differently -- was not really shown in this book. The novel ends, in fact, with Faith stepping off of the plane when she returns to England so you never get to see Faith interact with her immediate family afterwards. But I wanted to see her family dynamic, rich now with her sense of where her parents came from, unfold with the same skillful writing that set up the family dynamic in the first half of the book. I've noticed this a lot -- the first half of a book will be good, but the second half just slides away. I wonder -- did the author have to submit half of the novel to get the publishing contract, and didn't put as much work into the second half? Or did the author get tired of the story and want to just wrap up fast and move on to another? Most probably, it's that it's easier to build a good premise than it is to maintain that complex balance of character and plot as the story comes to a conclusion. At any rate, here's my summary: good premise, skillful writing, but the second half of the novel didn't live up to the first half.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Faith 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.
Book preview
A citromfa gyümölcse - Andrea Levy
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