REVIEW: THE LONG SONG BY ANDREA LEVY
GENERAL INFORMATION TITLE: THE LONG SONG AUTHOR: ANDREA LEVY PAGES: 311 PUBLISHER: HEADLINE REVIEW YEAR: 2011 GENRE: HISTORICAL FICTION COVER TYPE: HARD BACK www.amazon.co.uk/The-Long-Song-Andrea-Levy/dp/0755359429 www.andrealevy.co.uk BLURB FROM THE BACK COVER You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to…
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The Book Lover's Boudoir
GENERAL INFORMATION

TITLE: THE LONG SONG

AUTHOR: ANDREA LEVY

PAGES: 311

PUBLISHER: HEADLINE REVIEW

YEAR: 2011

GENRE: HISTORICAL FICTION

COVER TYPE: HARD BACK

www.amazon.co.uk/The-Long-Song-Andrea-Levy/dp/0755359429

www.andrealevy.co.uk

BLURB FROM THE BACK COVER

You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.

July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was present when slavery was declared no more. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July’s mama Kitty, of the Negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides – far too many for me to list here. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse.

Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Cha, I tell my son, what fuss-fuss. Come, let them just read it for themselves…

REVIEW

The Long Song isn’t as good as Levy’s novel Small Island I read a few weeks ago but I thought it was great.

The subject matter of slavery is a familiar one. There have been countless novels and films made about it. The one that springs to my mind is the TV mini-series Roots based on the novel of the same name.

I must confess, I’ve never read any fiction about slavery so I went into The Long Song and didn’t know what to expect.

The Long Song focusses on the life of a Negro slave in Jamaica called July. July is the narrator.

The story starts with her conception when her mother, a Negro slave called Kitty is raped by a white man, the overseer on the plantation ‘Amity ‘where she works. July’s birth is unremarkable – Kitty has a dizzy turn while cutting down sugar cane and doesn’t realise her daughter’s been born until the baby cries.

The Long Song is set just before, during and after the end of slavery. It’s a historical period I’m not familiar with and want to read more about. The main focus is what happens to Kitty and July and the plantation. Levy interjects little snippets of how the outside world is affected by events.

July is sold by the overseer at Amity when she’s very young and Kitty doesn’t see her daughter for many years.

Levy does a great job at tugging at the old heart strings.

Kitty takes the wide-spread riots of the slaves to as an opportunity for revenge. She murders the overseer who’s raped and abused her for so many years and almost kills his right hand man. This is one of the most powerful scenes in the novel. Kitty is executed for the crimes.

The Long Song is a fairly short novel and Levy packs an impressive amount of stuff into it.

The man who owns Amity shoots himself when he realises how bad things are.

The Negroes are fighting back and want their freedom and Jamaica is plagued by riots and chaos. Many people are dead. He sees a white man, a slave synthesiser, covered in tar, tied up and beaten to death in front of his wife by a group of white men.

July and Nimrod, a free Negro witness his suicide because they’re hiding under his bed in the room where he shoots himself. His sister refuses to accept her brother took his own life. Nimrod is blamed for the ‘murder’ and executed.

The Long Song is a very powerful novel. I think Levy did a great job of bringing certain historical events to life. The setting was very realistic. I could feel the pain in Kitty and July’s back as they worked the sugar cane fields. I felt the pain as they were raped, beaten and whipped. Levy’s prose in The Long Song is very evocative.

The Long Song uses an unusual technique. The novel is written in the third person from the viewpoint of various characters. At several points in the novel, July, now an old woman who’s decided to tell her story for her son directly addresses the reader and talks about the process of writing the story and shares anecdotes about her son and daughter-in-law.

I found this unusual and to be honest I didn’t like it. I felt it spoiled what would otherwise have been a great novel. I just wanted her to get on with the damn story. I wanted to know if Kitty was going to be executed or July would get to keep her baby.

The Long Song uses a lot of dialect, the broken English the slaves would have used. I usually hate it when a writer does that, especially when it’s not used all the time. Levy makes it work though. The first couple of times it happened it jarred a bit but I soon got used to it and didn’t even notice when Levy did it.

THE OPENING LINE

IT WAS FINISHED ALMOST as soon as it began…

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Long Song is a powerful novel that deals with a dark and turbulent period in history. I thought it was great. I want to read more novels that deal with the same subject matter.