As slavery comes to an end in Jamaica after an inconceivable 300 years, we learn about the life and times of July. House-slave on a sugar plantation with a fat and useless mistress, July overcomes a painful separation from her formidable field-slave mother, Kitty to somehow survive the brutality and injustice. As the tide of slavery turns, we see the white plantation owners struggle to keep their prosperity. We see 'good' Christian men bring their own insidious brand of racism in sheep's clothing. I wonder if I should read Small Island now (*spoiler* I did; I didn't like it either). I would hate to take another tepid bath in the Jamaican waters. I don't recommend this one with any vigor. Sure, if you can get it free, don't hesitate to accept it and read it. BUY it?! Oh hell no. Too many exciting books out there. I didn't connect with it, and I've read it twice now, so I think it's fair to say I've given the book a chance to make its mark on me. Household slaves were better off than the field workers, who are treated with contemptuous brutality. While Levy vividly conveys the horrors of slavery, she lightens the tone as her house slave characters act out complex rivalries and exploit their owners when they can. This was a book chosen by my book club. Once again it's a book I wouldn't have read left to my own devices but, as is usually the case, I’m glad I did. The Long Song is a thoroughly captivating novel… As well as being beautifully written The Long Song is a thoroughly researched historical novel that is both powerful and heartbreaking.”

The Long Song - Historical Novel Society The Long Song - Historical Novel Society

Following on from Small Island; this is another historical novel and this time Levy looks at her Jamaican roots charting the last days of slavery on the island. It is narrated by July, a former slave, and starts about 1831 the time of what was known as the Baptist revolt and goes to the end of slavery in the late 1830s. July is telling her story in old age whilst she is living with her son Thomas. The novel is the story of her early life on a plantation called Amity. Although narrated by July, it is edited by Thomas and there is a periodic interplay between the two which sometimes gives the story a slightly odd feel. She manages to share the story with great humour and frequent distaste. No one is immune to her stripping characters bare and showing their true selves. So there's no indulging flights of fancy, happy endings or gratuitous violence, although there is perhaps one character who manages to rise above the rest, but he was abandoned at birth so he deserves it. Levy’s handling of slavery is characteristically authentic, resonant and imaginative. She never sermonises. She doesn’t need to – the events and characters speak loud and clear for themselves… Slavery is a grim subject indeed, but the wonder of Levy’s writing is that she can confront such things and somehow derive deeply life-affirming entertainment from them.”

Book Summary

July is a mulatto, the daughter of Scottish overseer Tam Dewar, who raped Kitty, her slave mother. July enjoys giving us alternative accounts of her arrival in the world and Levy revels in storytelling itself, its sheer pliability. The memoir comes to its climax during the 10-day Baptist war in 1831 and the slave uprisings that followed. She makes you understand how chaotic and punitive this moment in history was, as well as liberating. Levy has researched the novel meticulously, but July has no desire to weigh herself down with any historical burden. Instead, she cheekily recommends that we do some homework ourselves but warns against a publication called Conflict and change. A view from the great house of slaves, slavery and the British Empire, observing: "… if you do read it and find your head nodding in agreement at this man's bluster, then away with you – for I no longer wish you as my reader." July describes herself as a mulatto; her father was white, an overseer and raped her mother. She was taken from her mother whilst still young to become the pet and then lady’s maid to Caroline Mortimer, the vapid and foolish sister of the plantation owner. A new overseer, Robert Goodwin, arrives with good intentions and a Christian upbringing. He intends to show that following slavery the plantation can be managed on humane lines. The charting of his downfall on several levels is fascinating. He ends up being just as cruel as his predecessors. The story is weaved around actual historical events.

The Long Song - Extracts and reviews Andrea Levy - The Long Song - Extracts and reviews

mp_sf_list: a:5:{i:0;s:15:"mp_sf_list_item";i:1;s:15:"mp_sf_list_item";i:2;s:15:"mp_sf_list_item";i:3;s:15:"mp_sf_list_item";i:4;s:15:"mp_sf_list_item";} The Guardian: ‘I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can take on the world’Levy’s handling of slavery is characteristically authentic, resonant and imaginative. She never sermonises. She doesn’t need to – the events and characters speak loud and clear for themselves… Slavery is a grim subject indeed, but the wonder of Levy’s writing is that she can confront such things and somehow derive deeply life-affirming entertainment from them.’ But she does permit herself to describe the symbolic funeral that marked the end of slavery on 31 July 1838, only then to admit that she was not actually present. She was still cooped up with her white mistress, Caroline Mortimer, owner of the sugar plantation. It depends on whom you ask, as the term is somewhat slippery, meaning that various authors and literary critics define it differently. William H. Gass coined the term in 1970 in an essay entitled "Philosophy and the Form of Fiction". Commenting on American fiction of the 1960s, Gass pointed out that a new term was needed for the emerging genre of experimental texts that openly broke with the tradition of literary realism still dominant in post-WW II American literature. Metafiction is thus an elastic concept covering a wide range of fictions. I really wanted to like Andrea Levy’s The Long Song. The subject matter is interesting—the last years of slavery in Jamaica in the 1820s-30s—and Levy’s outstanding 2004 novel Small Island was one of my favourite British novels of the 2000s. The Long Song I found strangely inept for someone who has written such an accomplished novel as Small Island. If I had read it ‘cold’, without knowing the author’s name, I might have judged it the work of a promising (-ish) first-time novelist with a lot to learn.

Songbook Foundation The Great American Songbook Foundation

A well-researched book that wears its scholarship lightly… An immensely readable and well-paced book.” mp_sf_list_4_description: See The Long Song on MASTERPIECE on PBS in three episodes, Sundays, January 31, February 7 and 14, 2021 at a special time – 10pm ET. Watch each episode online in the general streaming window for 14 days, starting the night of the broadcast premiere. After that, enjoy The Long Song, and a selection of other MASTERPIECE shows, when you watch with PBS Passport, an added member benefit. There's three levels of storytelling, and sometimes four where July draws on the memories of other characters. To call this a book that tests the limits of unreliable narration would be to invoke an understatement. But memory can be self-serving, and July uses her imagination to fill in the gaps of the story-telling. She speaks of events she didn’t witness as if she was there. She is privy to facts she would never have known. So if she can do all this, how much of her own story can we actually trust to be accurate? Andrea Levy was the author of six books, including Small Island, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Whitbread Book of the Year.

Slavery is a grim subject indeed, but the wonder of Levy’s writing is that she can confront such things and somehow derive deeply life-affirming entertainment from them. ... Levy’s aim, she says, was to write a book that instilled pride in anyone with slave ancestors and The Long Song, though 'its load may prove to be unsettling', is surely that book.

Long Song: A Novel - Andrea Levy - Google Books The Long Song: A Novel - Andrea Levy - Google Books

Based on the award-winning novel by the late Andrea Levy ( Small Island), the fictional story is inspired by Levy’s family history. Levy was born in England to Jamaican parents who arrived in Britain in 1948. “I’ve always used my books as a personal journey to understand my Caribbean heritage – and with that sooner or later you have to confront slavery,” Levy said. Despite hating the main character, July, as I think she was a spoiled brat who didn't appreciate what was given to her, I couldn't help but feel pity towards her. She did lead a hard life, as her choices were taken away from her even before she was born - although some of the choices she could make where not the best ones. But one must not judge, specially if never having been through a similar situation.The opening episode of last night’s three-part adaptation, to be screened over consecutive nights, manages the same feat, thanks to a finely whetted script from Sarah Williams (who also adapted Levy’s Small Island for television in 2009) and some outstanding work from a first-class cast. Central to this is rising star Tamara Lawrance, who captures all of July’s ebullience and intelligence, fiercely restrained in the capricious, violent mistress’s presence but forever straining at its bounds. Over the years she learns to handle Caroline (a pitch-perfect performance from Hayley Atwell, who takes her right up to the line of real monstrousness without crossing into caricature), make a good life within its awful and motherless constraints – and then, gleefully at first, embraces the upending of that life when the Christmas Rebellion begins. It's all rather one-note cute-n-coyness from my POV. The narrative drive is that these are the memories of Miss July. So that takes any suspense out of the book. I know she's alive to tell the tale, so who cares who else dies?