“He wondered what kind of world she had brought her two daughters into – the tedious cycle of rural Jamaican life. No chance for them to set off upon adventures and see the outside world.”
But sisters Jenny and Hortense Rodney, descendants of the fierce Maroon people, do get to see the world, and Island Songs is their story. Growing up in rural Claremont, working amid the hustle and bustle, lawn parties and ‘houses of joy’ in Trenchtown, the two sisters take a chance and move to England with their husbands, that far-off land of riches, where they settle down to motherhood amongst the jazz cafés and bleak streets of Brixton.
A hauntingly and beautifully written evocation of twentieth-century Jamaica, its history and traditions, Island Songs is an epic of love, laughter and sorely tested family loyalties. Many stories are told, but many more secrets are never revealed.
About the Author
Alex Wheatle is the author of several novels, some of them set in Brixton, where he grew up.
Born in London of Jamaican parents, his first book, Brixton Rock (1999), tells the story of a 16-year-old boy of mixed race, in 1980s Brixton. Brixton Rock was adapted for the stage and performed at the Young Vic in 2010. Its sequel, Brenton Brown, was published in 2011.
His second novel, East of Acre Lane (2001), has a similar setting, and won a London Arts Board New Writers Award. A prequel, Island Songs, set in Jamaica, was published in 2005, and a sequel, Dirty South, in 2008.
Other novels include In the Seven Sisters (2002), in which the scene moves to Surrey in 1976, where four boys escape from an abusive life in a children’s home; and Checkers (2003), written with Mark Parham, was published in 2003. His most recent novels, Liccle Bit (2015), Crongton Knights (2016) – winner of the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – and Straight Outta Crongton (2017), are novels for young adult readers, focusing on the lives of teenagers and families on the fictional South Crongton council estate.
In 2010, he wrote and toured the one-man autobiographical performance, Uprising. His play, Shame & Scandal, had its debut at the Albany Theatre, Deptford in October 2015.
Alex Wheatle lives in London. He was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 2008.
Other Books by the Author
Crongton Knight
Liccle Bit
Brixton Rock
Cane Warriors
Home Girl
Straight Outta Crongton
East of Acre Lane
The Dirty South
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.