The Long Song: A Novel

Wonderfully written tale that takes you on an adventure into another place and time. I did not want this book to end.

Set in a narrative fiction, The Long Song is the story of a Jamaican slave, Miss July, told at the request of her adult son – a proprietor of a publishing house. Miss July is a reluctant teller, but she certainly has a voice to savor with a charm all her own. We learn through her story that she was the product of a slave girl, Kitty, and the plantation overseer, Tam Dewar. As a child, she was snatched up into the plantation house and trained as a ladies maid and companion to the owner’s sister, Caroline Mortimer.Having read and loved Levy’s Small Island, I was anxious to read this work of fiction. For me, The Long Song did not disappoint. Some of my Goodreads friends did not care for this book – Levy’s characters were accused of being insipid and the tone too light for such a serious subject matter. I appreciated hearing those comments ahead of time, and I read with a thought as to why the author might portray her characters the way she did. Miss July really came alive for me. In fact, she reminded me of a woman I have known and loved. She is charming and mischievous; and yes, she had a hard life, but she didn’t want to dwell on the tragedies. I felt that Levy understood that a real person, reluctantly telling a story so full of sadness, might want to downplay the bad events. To dwell on them would be to give into the despair, rather than showing that she had been able to come through it as a survivor.Levy presents a novel that is well-researched – including the language used by Jamaican slaves (as is evidenced in her lengthy resource list at the conclusion of the book). She also shows a bit of the origins of the Jamaican class system, which currently favors lighter-skinned blacks.In addition to all that, The Long Song is a moving and uplifting tale of a people who are able to retain dignity in the midst of enslavement. I can see why it was a finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

Reading this very accomplished novel reinforced for me once again the extra horrors of the British system of slavery on Jamaica and the grim realities of working on a sugar cane plantation. While there is a great deal about the novel to admire --- the descriptions, the language, the characterizations are all very well done, and you can clearly see the plantation setting of the book -- for some reason it did not create the emotional involvement with the heroine that would have made it a greater book. July struggles to survive and loses most of the people she cares for; the ultimate loss, of her beloved baby daughter, should have felt more awful than it does. The happy ending has an element of sad mystery since her life between the birth of her son and his finding of her 30 years later is not related in the book and we are left to deduce just how hard it was. Thomas, July's son, is a truly good person and successful as well, and I would like to more of his story. I would actually recommend Marlon James' novel, The Book of Night Women, for a more serious fictional portrait of slavery in Jamaica.

This is a lovely novel by Andrea Levy. The only issue is that it is written in both first-person and third-person narrative, which can be a bit confusing if the reader is already having a difficult time following a story line. That said, the story is very interesting. July is not only an interesting character, but a good narrator. Her story, which she recounts from the moment of her conception, is probably historically accurate for slave women in the Anglophone Caribbean. When her daughter is kidnapped and taken to England, July's emotional collapse is so dramatic and real; it is difficult to imagine a woman feeling any less hurt, lost, and betrayed. Levy leaves her audience wondering, at the conclusion, what happened to July's kidnapped daughter. Perhaps there is the possibility of a sequel in which her daughter's story of growing up in England as an White, English child is revealed. All in all, this novel is a must-read for fans of Andrea Levy and scholars of Anglophone Caribbean Literature of the diaspora.

Well-written historical fiction.The characters are well fleshed out. The history of the English owned Jamaican sugar plantations and the black slaves forced to work on them is very informative as well as entertaining. The telling of this story is unique.I would recommend this book to those interested in Jamaican history as well as another presentation of slavery.

The writing is delicious as are the characters. While you feel the extraordinary hardships endured by our heroine, you revel in her honest appraisals of the people and world around her. A must read.

I categorize books in "easy read" and "hard read" My usual reads are by Delinsky, Macomber, Michaels, etc.-mostly romance. This book caught my eye in the Better Homes and Garden pages. It was listed under "Books we can't put down." That was provocative enough for me to order from Amazon. Well, it was for me a "hard read" meaning it took more than three or four nights to finish. I stuck with it, anxious to find out how Miss July completes her journey. Yes, it was a book I couldn't put down as well. I'm glad I decided to try this author as I was not familiar with her. I would recommend it and I feel I learned a lot of important information regarding slavery in Jamaica and humankind.

This is the second time reading The Long Song! I just can't get enough helpings of this beautifully written meal. To be immersed into a sad piece of history albeit fiction is not only eye-opening but written in a way not to bear down on anyone or make it too heavy a read.I preferred less the temporal jumping back and forth and switching of voices and would've enjoyed more of July's narrative as it happened. But that is a minor partiality and still doesn't stop me from picking it up again!

Andrea Levy's story of slavery and the slave rising in Jamaica is told in the rich voice of July, born as a baby to a slave mother,separated from her mother at a young age, reared as a house slave to a British planter and his sister. Levy consistently captures throughout the wonderful,unforgettable resonant voice of July as she lives through many horrifying events. The callous treatment of the slaves and the appalling hypocrisy of the British plantation owners is depicted with wonderful irony. I was really sorry when I got to the end of the book; I enjoyed it so much.

Written in complete dialect I really struggled to get to grips with this book. It had some great reviews from reliable sources but I wonder if they read the same book as me. It is one of those where I continued to struggle along and even at 90% through I wanted to give in. However I persevered only for the insight of the happenings in the Carribbean after the abolition of slavery. The plot is good but I couldn't get on with the language.

On a number of levels this is a difficult read. Confronting a shameful British past and the iniquity and cruelty of slavery firstly. Secondly, the realisation that ‘freedom’ was not freedom in any recognisable form. The fight for that and against racism continued and continues. Then, thirdly, it’s not written in an easy style nor are the characters drawn with soft soap sentimentality. You find that both the villains and the victims of the piece are flawed and difficult to like. So I can’t say I enjoyed reading this book but I’m glad that I have.

July was born into slavery on a sugar-plantation. In old age, matriarch to the family of her free and prosperous son, she relates her personal story of Jamaica in the lead up to and early years of emancipation. By timely coincidence, I’ve finished reading this on the same day I’ve attended a talk by Nicholas Draper, UCL researcher and author of ‘The Price of Emancipation’. The novel is enthralling, the characters empathetically drawn and believable, the story by turns funny, human, shocking and tragic. This is history we all need to know, brought vividly to life. My complaint is a minor one: I wanted to feel more. Although July’s desire to mask and downplay her past pain and anger is entirely believable, her archly mocking voice held me at a distance, preventing me (perhaps intentionally?) from fully investing in her. Far better so, it has to be said, than sentimentality or melodrama, so maybe a wise choice by Andrea Levy.

I can’t like the story, not that I don’t. It’s too much a cliche, a story of slaves you could have heard over and over again. Yes, those are the ones...You see? You can even guess it. That’s why I only give it 3 stars, and 5-star for her lyrical prose.What’s fascinating though, is my realization that in Jamaica, the people also like to add a suffix, the sound ‘cha’ at almost all the sentences, just like what we do with ‘lah’.She has won the prestigious Booker Prize, will I read her other novels? Hmmm...