The narration of Small Island is shared between four characters: Hortense Joseph (nee Roberts), her husband Gilbert, their landlady Queenie Bligh (nee Buxton) and Queenie’s husband Bernard.

Andrea Levy has said of them:

It was very important to me that each of the four characters had their own distinct voice. One of the reasons I enjoy writing in the first person is that the process of writing a character can become more like acting. I used to feel my way into the character before I started writing and try to see everything that was happening through their eyes. So for example with Hortense I would sit up straight and imagine myself in white gloves and hear her voice in my head. This sounds all very pretentious but it helped me to understand the world from her point to view. Also when I write I read back to myself aloud; to me, each of the characters had a distinct way of speaking as well.

The Daily Telegraph critic described the book as being ‘written in a plain, homely style, one that is keen for us to attend to the subtle shifts and twists that its characters undergo’. The reviewer went on to say: ‘Levy undercuts any assumption that race alone defines them, and is keen to highlight those symmetries and parallels in their life experiences.’

In its review, the Independent on Sunday said: ‘What makes Levy’s writing so appealing is her even-handedness. All her characters can be weak, hopeless, brave, good, bad – whatever their colour.’

Hortense has grown up believing she is destined for a golden life. She considers herself to be a cut above most of the other islanders because she has skin ‘the colour of warm honey’, is the daughter of Lovell Roberts (‘a man of class’), has perfect diction and manners, and has been educated to be a teacher. She has an early disappointment in Jamaica when she can only get a job teaching the dark-skinned children of Half Way Tree Parish School with their ‘wretched black faces’ rather than the ‘polite, clean and well-spoken pupils’ from ‘good families’ she had hoped for. However, it is her experience of coming to Britain that is the biggest letdown. A reviewer describes Hortense’s shock at the ugliness of racist Britain, a place where her fair skin, white gloves and college education count for nothing, as ‘both hilarious and woeful’, making her ‘a character you love to hate — or, more accurately, enjoy being exasperated by’. At first offended by what she sees as the coarseness and ignorance of her husband, by the end of the novel she has grown to love him. A reviewer described this ‘slow development of Hortense’s respect for her husband as she begins to understand the challenges he faces’ as ‘one of the most moving aspects of the book’.

Gilbert is a near look-alike of Michael Roberts, Hortense’s adored cousin and Queenie’s lover. Hortense marries Gilbert for convenience, as it means she will be able to go to Britain; Queenie takes him in as a paying lodger and odd job man. However, though the women may at first be disappointed that he is not in the same class as the paragon that is Michael, through his narration Gilbert proves to be a man of honour, humour, insight and generosity. A privately educated son of a Christian convert, Gilbert is a man who has quickly learnt to scale down his big dreams to fit his circumstances. This has not been achieved without some regret: his ideas soar so high above his lowly station he can see them ‘lamenting and waving goodbye’. He may seem a bit of a buffoon to Hortense, but he has hidden depths and hidden strengths, which are gradually revealed to her once she joins him in London.

Growing up, Queenie, like Hortense, believed she was destined for a superior life. She was not like the dirty, common miners’ children in the village, being the daughter of a butcher, and her ‘posh’ Aunt Dorothy had taken her off to London so she could learn deportment and elocution and thereby make a good marriage. Like Hortense, too, Queenie soon learns there are limitations to what life can offer her and, on her aunt’s death, marries the tedious Bernard in order to remain in the city instead of returning home to the ‘stinking’ farm. Queenie is warm-hearted and gregarious, feeling sorry for the bombed-out East Enders who are snubbed by her neighbours and taking in Jamaican lodgers after the war, but she is also pragmatic, charging Gilbert and his friends more than their rooms are worth. A reviewer said that Queenie’s ‘cultural ignorance and insensitivity are hard to ignore’, but added that unlike other characters encountered in the book she was ‘More tactless than malicious’.

Bernard, like Gilbert, is a man who has returned from the war to find the old world he knew has shrunk beyond recognition. In an interview, Andrea Levy referred to him ‘coming back and feeling a kind of redundancy’. It is this confusion and feeling of inadequacy that gives his character a sympathetic side, despite his racism and selfishness. He is a dull man with irritating habits who rarely speaks and who had never done anything interesting in his life until the war came. He hopes he might become a hero and enjoys the camaraderie of being part of a team, never realising that he is a figure of fun to the younger men in his company.