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The Long Song: A Novel
The Long Song: A Novel
The Long Song: A Novel
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The Long Song: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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Finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize
The New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year


In her follow-up to Small Island, winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, Andrea Levy once again reinvents the historical novel.

Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her "Marguerite." Together they live through the bloody Baptist War and the violent and chaotic end of slavery. An extraordinarily powerful story, "The Long Song leaves its reader with a newly burnished appreciation for life, love, and the pursuit of both" (The Boston Globe).

LanguageEnglish
Release dateApr 27, 2010
ISBN9781429929882
The Long Song: A Novel
Author

Andrea Levy

Born in London, England to Jamaican parents, Andrea Levy (1956-2019) was the author of Small Island, winner of the Whitbread Award (now Costa Award), the Orange Prize for Fiction (now Women’s Prize for Fiction), and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The BBC Masterpiece Classic television adaptation of her novel won an International Emmy for best TV movie/miniseries. Andrea’s other books include the Man Booker Prize finalist The Long Song, also adapted by the BBC for television, and Fruit of the Lemon, among others.

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Rating: 3.706199470619946 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I adored the way Miss July speaks to us and calls us "Reader".

    I truly felt as though she was speaking directly to me. She was revealing her life story and I was the only one she was talking with in such an intimate fashion and I was hanging on to her every word.

    And a brilliant story it was!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Received via Member Giveaway.The Long Song provides a well-told glimpse into the lives of sugar plantation residents - both slaves and owners.Miss July is the perfect narrator for the story. It is her story for the most part. But it is also the story of the people around her, and the times she lives in.While it is not entirely a comfortable read, Ms. Levy's prose takes you into the lives of the characters portrayed - their loves, their sorrows, their envies, and what makes them who they are - in such a way as to make them come alive.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Miss July was born a slave on a Jamaican sugar plantation. When she was a child, the English mistress took a liking to her and brought her from the fields into the house, forcibly separating July from her mother and insisting on calling her "Marguerite." July came of age serving the mistress, and made it through some very tumultuous times, including the Baptist Rebellion and later, the abolition of slavery. Now an old woman, July is living with her son and his family and sets to writing her story. That sentence alone tells you her life was an unusual one, and there are many details and plot twists the reader can look forward to in this novel.I loved this book, and I loved July and her strong personality. Her survival was mostly due to pure cunning, mixed with a bit of luck. The people in her life -- both slaves and whites -- were well drawn, and Andrea Levy didn't shy away from the violent realities of slave treatment, the consequences of rebellion, and the tension once slaves were free but still expected to work on plantations. This novel was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize and is a worthy contender for that honor.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Andrea Levy has written a lyrical novel of slavery and freedom in Jamaica during the first half of the 19th Century. The narrator tells a rambling tale held in check by a family editor that covers three generations of sugar plantation slaves owned by British resident “massas.” These are not benevolent owners as in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind. The masters and overseers are brutal and ignorant of the ways of their slaves and are apparently the dregs of the wealthy and working class families in England.There is humor in the novel involving tricks the slaves play on the owners involving poor service provided in every area outside of the cane fields. The slaves must kow-tow to the white owners and overseers, but they get their revenge by spilling food, using dirty bedsheets for table cloths, destroying owners’ clothing by over-washing and mishandling it, and squatting on property on the fringes of the plantations.Freedom is hard-won and the “free” life can be more difficult than continuing to work for the owners offering “fair” wages. But for many freed slaves in Jamaica, freedom in poverty is preferred over doing the same difficult work in the fields they did as slaves. Many of the expatriate dregs of England give up trying to entice the freed slaves back to the plantations with the reinforcements of capitalism. One by one, the scions return to their mother land and corporations replace the single family ownership of sugar cane plantations.I enjoyed this interesting story of Jamaican life in the 19th Century with its violence, humor, rape, revenge, conceptions, birthing, family destruction, slavery, triumphs of free will, and ultimate freedom from slavery. Levy describes the evolution of a social structure on the island with a combination of realism and impressionism. The reader is left to determine if the driving force of the struggle for freedom from tyranny is best served by personal economic reinforcement or collective redistribution of wealth.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I really liked the book after I got used to the way it was written. It is sometimes needed to be read again to understand it. It is not a book to be skimmed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A slave called July is the narrator of this tale which takes place in Jamaica before and after the abolition of slavery by England in 1833.The Amity sugar plantation is owned by British ex-patriots Jonathan Howarth and his widowed sister Caroline Mortimer. At Christmas 1832, there is an uprising by the free blacks and the slaves and many people are killed. Jonathan is so disgusted by the madness and behaviour of his fellow man that he shoots himself, leaving Caroline in charge. She is quite incompetent and depends a great deal on her personal maid July, who she calls Marguerite because it sounds classier. July becomes pregnant and abandons her son at the local baptist church. He is raised by the pastor as his son Thomas Kinsman.Meanwhile England abolishes slavery and the slaves of Amity are set free. Caroline goes threw several overseers until she settles on Robert Goodwin, a preacher’s son, who brings a management style to the plantation that restores order and profits while respecting the rights of the former slaves. Of course he falls in love with July. In order to respect his father’s strict rules on behaviour, he marries Caroline and sleeps with July. She becomes pregnant with Emily. I won’t spoil the ending but it is heartbreaking for July. Years later her son Thomas Kinsman finds her in Jamaica and her sad life ends.This is a good story about slavery and its horrible living and working conditions. The characters are well developed and interesting and their comical attitude towards their incompetent masters is well done. The spoken language is a little difficult to follow. The slaves are regularly referred to as niggers and are regarded as chattel. Once liberated, their attitudes towards their former masters is quite well documented and their working demands are not unreasonable.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Bleh! Loved Small Island, but this was nowhere near as good, or as well written. Did not enjoy the time spent reading this.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A slave narrative, set in Jamaica on the Amity plantation. 9 year old July is taken from her mother to be the companion of the owner's sister, a newly arrived widow from England. Noone comes out of this novel looking particularly good, in fact there is much more talk of goodness than anything approaching it. But the characters are very real and however fortunately distant the reader's experience, very familiar and recognizable. I am unlikely to be enthusiastic about any slave narrative though.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Such a magnificent piece of storytelling by gifted author, Andrea Levy. It speaks of the abuse and cruelty leading up to, through and after The Baptist War of Jamaica (1831/1832). But it also shares the tenderest of moments, shared sorrows and and dreams of hope. Levy's scene settings are cinematic as an aged woman (once a slave) recalls her life on that island. Her educated son struggles to keep a handle on her telling. So there are snippets of story which contradict (depending on whose telling you wish to believe). Levy has adopted Jamaican nomenclature which does take a bit of getting used to. But all in all, this was an excellent read and quite informative.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A former slave on a Jamaican sugar plantation writes the story of a former slave on a Jamaican sugar plantation. While the story is autobiographical, it's also clear that the writer is an unreliable narrator. She confesses to exaggeration at several points in her story. This is an exceptional book as far as technique goes, but I found it difficult to connect with the characters on an emotional level except for the field slave, Kitty, in her grief at the forced separation from her child. A strong undercurrent of anger runs throughout the book, and perhaps that accounts for my inability to connect with the characters. I felt angry on their behalf, but I didn't experience the empathy that occurs when a book's characters inhabit my heart and mind.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Chronicling the life of a slave named July in Jamaica, readers learn the plight of her family, including her mother who died in the Rebellion. The story then follows July's life as she continues her life of servitude and then past that period. The book is not for the faint of heart as some of the treatments of slaves are brutal and an execution scene is described in pretty graphic detail. The book flows with the rhythm of much Caribbean literature. It's a style where the narrator talks to the reader. I love these asides, and I especially one such aside which was the shortest chapter in the book. I'll leave that one for other readers to enjoy when they read this volume. It is easy to see why this book was on the shortlist for the Booker Prize at the time of its publication.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I'm not sure that this ever really took flight for me. I kept expecting it to seer the pages, and it kept feeling like it was pulling its punches. Maybe that was the point, but it felt like something was missing. Told by July, it is a life story. You first discover July is being encouraged to write this by her son, who she lives with in a seemingly comfortable state. This is her life, told in retrospect, from its beginnings in slavery to her becoming a house servant, then becoming free and what that means to her and her fellow slaves. . The interplay between past and present and the interjections of the son at times felt clumsy. July tries several times to end her memoir, but her son wants it told, I'm not sure this reflects well on either of them. He seems to want her to get to the part where he looks good, she seems happy to leave certain parts of the tale untold. Either way, it didn't seem to hang together very well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The best book I've read so far this year. Andrea Levy tells the story of the last years of Jamaican slavery and the first years of manumission with a piercing humor, sometimes gentle and humane and sometimes appropriately less so.

    The story is framed by a successful Jamaican printer who encourages his mother, July, to write down the story of her life, largely because she is distracting him by constantly trying to tell it to him. Mostly she tells the story in the third person but periodically the novel returns to the first person, present tense -- the time she is writing it many years later. It begins with July's conception in the rape of her mother by the overseer. And the continuous narrative ends with an event even more cold hearted and brutal.

    In between, it tells the story of July, a sly, witty slave who becomes a house slave and, after manumission, continues on as a house servant.

    It is hard for me to capture just how compelling, well written, beautifully imagined, funny, and tragic the book is. So you should read it for yourself.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Disappointment. Loved Island book
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very good. Vivid imagery, lively language, strong narrative.The patois of Jamaican slaves well rendered (as far as I can tell); sticks in the mind like a catchy tune. Slight woolliness about who the narrator is, a literary contrivance I would prefer left out. She renders strongly the cruelty, not only in vicious punishments and sexual exploitation, but in the fieldwork itself
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I did not enjoy this book very much. It is well written, and it follows the story of a woman born into slavery in Jamaica and focuses on the Baptist War and the beginning of freedom for slaves on that island. The woman in the story, July, gives insight into island life for slaves at this time, and does a good job of showing the relationships between different classes of people at the time.

    The problem I have with the story is that it's told through the eyes of the woman in the form of a narrator writing a story (in this case, July, who is writing the story at the behest of her long-lost son who has become successful and has found her). While writing the story, she breaks from the narrative to speak with the reader, and I found it distracting and annoying.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    In The Long Song, Levy’s narrator is an old Black woman who has been asked by her son, a successful publisher, to write her memoirs of slavery in Jamaica. The story alternates between her memoir of the 1830′s and her present day interactions with her son and his family. This is a difficult time made bearable and more--rich and exciting--because of the first person narrator.She is poetic, tough, sly, funny and “unreliable.” I put that in quotation marks because her lack of reliability is only in her literal statements; the truth shouts out between the lines and I would bet that the narrator knows it. She is such a vivid character that I find myself slipping into talking about her as if she were real, something that always makes me roll my eyes when friends or book club members do it.Levy’s narrator uses her privilege as memoirist and old lady to skip over horrors when she finds they’re too much, and so Levy saves the reader from being overwhelmed. Yet the narrator’s sharp and clever observations convey everything that needs to be conveyed.The writing here is brilliant.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This month’s book The Long Song by Andrea Levy has started us off in great style with a stimulating discussion, on the book itself and the many issues found within. We could all be forgiven for our first reaction, ‘another story of slavery’. We have read plenty covering this topic over the years, but as all good book clubs do, we uncovered more than the usual heartbreak and injustice … humour being a major contributor to our club’s enjoyment. This is not to say we felt the author took her theme lightly. It is more the narrative approach, that of July, in her impatient, slightly defiant senior’s voice that had us chuckling through this biographical memoir that her son has persuaded her to write. The tricks and antics of her forbearers revealed comic insubordination and rebelliousness that is rare in a slavery novel.However, we did have some conflicting opinions. Nancy read on only through a feeling of guilt, … she should feel empathy and remorse, yet the book left her with no such feelings, and she found the narrative tiresome. Tera could remember little about the story, yet she did remember enjoying the subtle humour, and Anne again was left with nothing more than a few notes that she jotted down simply to keep track of who was who, and what was what. But overall the comments were positive. It was thought to be a well researched and beautifully told novel. Clever and possibly written for the screen. Viti and a few others would have liked a little more historical background of the place and time, but we all agreed the purpose of the story was more in the form of a personal account of native Jamaicans and plantation slavery. Regardless which view point you took, we ended up discussing social and economic wealth and distribution, historical and contemporary injustices and what they all mean today. Not bad for the start of a new year. Levy’s previous books have all been noted down for further reading. Always a good indication with our group!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    very readable, and I assume a well researched insight in the last years of slavery in jamaica, giving a voice to individuals from that great group of very unfortunate people who had to spend their whole lives, or a part, as slaves. in an interview at the end of the book levy says she wanted to try to help them leave a trace of their existence by telling their stories.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Darker than Small Island but still with powerful characters (few of whom are entirely sympathetic) and flashes of humour, particularly in the interactions between the novel's narrator, July, and her son Thomas Kinsman.July is born into slavery on a Jamaican plantation in the 19th century. During her lifetime upheaval is followed by, and follows, the process of emancipation. The premise of the book is that she is writing down her life story at the urging of her son, now in the printing trade. The story is intermingled with her observations on the writing process, her son;'s observations on what she writes, and her opinions of her son's opinions. It's thus both her life story and the story of the telling of it, and this combination makes the novel special.A great read, well-researched with sources cited in the afterword. It portrays the complexity of human relationships in this tragic and unfortunate period of history and shows how discrimination operates at many levels.On writing this review, I was moved to read the 'foreword' (by Thomas, the son of the narrator) again. I recomend you do the same after reading the book. It makes so much more sense then.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a story of a slave girl, July in mid nineteenth century Jamaica. July is born to a field slave by a white overseer. In her childhood she is taken from her mother to be a personal maid to the mistress of the house. July grows up and learns to be sly and manipulative. In 1832, in Jamaica the Baptist war broke out and it sowed the seeds of freedom from slavery in the minds of the black slaves which they got from the Queen of England in 1838. In the meantime July gives birth to a child and abandons him at the footsteps of the Baptist priest. Even after achieving freedom July continues to work as a maid. The overseer, Mr. Goodwin lusts after July and after marrying her mistress has a child with July. Soon trouble finds the plantation and the workers, now no longer slaves leave the plantation. As the plantation is in ruin Mr. Goodwin and his wife leave for England and take July's daughter but leave July behind. July spends the next few years on the grounds scavenging for her food till the time she is found by her son (her first child) who brings her into his family. The story is told by July in third person. The author uses humor tastefully. The book makes you laugh, cry and be angry in turns. A good read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Life as a slave and as a freeman.The Long Song differed from other slave fictions in that it continued beyond the lives of slaves on the sugar plantations in Jamaica and into their lives after slavery and the hardships that freedom also brought.The book was narrated by July, half negro, half white, (mulatto). She was the daughter of the overseer on the plantation, although he would never acknowledge her as such. At the age of 9 she was separated from her mother by Caroline Mortimer, the sister of the plantation owner, just because she took a fancy to the cute little girl. She worked in the big house and eventually became Caroline's personal servant. As slavery is abolished she becomes swept up in the madness of the times and the subsequent struggle to survive.The narrative is July's account of her life on the plantation, in the big house, and subsequently as a freeman. It is written as she nears the end of her life and is living with her son, Thomas, a printer by trade. He encourages her to write her life story, which he will then publish.I didn't really enjoy the way in which the book was presented - July tells her own story in an authentic Jamaican voice, but this voice seems to dilute in the telling to a more 'British' voice, which then suddenly reverts when we are again made more aware that this is July's story. I'd have preferred her voice consistantly, to this yo-yo effect.In addition, July would tell one version of her life and then say 'no, that's not really what happened' and then re-tell it. I found this mildly annoying.This was my third book by Andrea Levy, but not my favourite. I enjoyed Every Light in the House Burnin' but by far my favourite was Small Island, definitely a hard act to follow.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved the voice of the narrator who told this story of July a slave on a sugar plantation in Jamaica. The story set in a time of change when Britain was abolishing slavery is heartrending. Another wonderful novel by Andrea Levy.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A vivid protrayal of a young woman's life during the fall of slavery in British colonial Jamaica.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This story, The Long Song by Andrea Levy, is interesting, even fascinating at times. That proved to be the problem for me....at times. It is about Miss July, (Marguerite as she came to be called by her mistress), a slave in Jamaica on an elite plantation during the days of excess, the days of the Queen freeing the slaves, the days of the freed slaves revolting and the days of the failing plantations. Miss July is a very interesting character and if the book had chosen to stay on the task it began, I think it would have been much better but it chose to go off in different directions that I found distracting. Characters would be introduced that you liked but then came to disrespect. Miss July was always the same and I liked her a great deal. My biggest gripe comes at the end of the book when it goes into her son's journalism and I just pretty much got bored with the whole thing by then, but for the fact that I knew we would come back to Miss July. And we did. I reluctantly recommend this book. I think some will really like it and some not. I am just below the middle of the graph and gave it 3 stars. I scored it that high for the hope that I found within it and for the first 4/5 of the book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I love Andrea Levy’s books, always a good read and she seems to crank up a notch with every one she writes. This one looks at slavery: I’ve read books on a similar theme set in the USA but now it’s the turn of reprehensible British colonialism to take the stand. I had no idea how the UK came to be linked with Jamaica but do now.The narrative voice is beguiling, the way it dances round a theme or event taking frequent detours to paint a proper picture of what happened. The novel is structured around a pivotal point midway through (the official ending of slavery in Jamaica) and demonstrates that this event didn’t necessarily mean an end to injustice.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    July is born in the early part of the nineteenth century on a Jamaican sugar plantation. Her mother is a black slave, her father the white overseer who is her mother’s rapist. One hot day when July is still just a young child, she is noticed by Caroline Mortimer, the sister of the plantation’s owner who has arrived from England. On a whim, Caroline decides to take July to be her companion, stealing her from July’s mother without a second thought and renaming her Marguerite. The Long Song is July’s story, narrated retrospectively by an adult July many years later. It is not an easy story, spanning decades and taking the reader through the tumultuous years of the Baptist War and the controversial end to slavery in Jamaica. But, it is July’s voice which drives the narrative. Funny, cynical, highly observant and intelligent, July weighs in on racism, violence, and the struggle for freedom at a time when blacks were viewed as property to rich, white landowners.Only with a white man, can there be guarantee that the colour of your pickney will be raised. For a mulatto who breeds with a white man will bring forth a quadroon; and the quadroon that enjoys white relations will give to this world a mustee; the mustee will beget a mustiphino; and the mustiphino…oh, the mustiphino’s child with a white man for a papa will find each day greets them no longer with a frown, but welcomes them with a smile, as they at last stride within this world as a cherished white person. – from The Long Song, page 203 -The Long Song is a brilliant novel narrated by an unforgettable character. July is, perhaps, one of the most memorable female voices I have read in a long, long time. Bittersweet, funny, often devastating…this is a novel which drew me in immediately and held me in its grip to the final page. Andrea Levy writes with an honesty and insight into the human condition that takes one’s breath away.The Long Song was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and named as a 2010 New York Times Most Notable book. It is, in my opinion, worthy of all these accolades. Beautiful prose, enduring characters, and the evocation of place that vibrates off the page, all combine to create a remarkable novel of historical significance.Readers who love literary fiction and historical fiction will want to put The Long Song on their must read list.Highly recommended.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The best book I've read so far this year. Andrea Levy tells the story of the last years of Jamaican slavery and the first years of manumission with a piercing humor, sometimes gentle and humane and sometimes appropriately less so.The story is framed by a successful Jamaican printer who encourages his mother, July, to write down the story of her life, largely because she is distracting him by constantly trying to tell it to him. Mostly she tells the story in the third person but periodically the novel returns to the first person, present tense -- the time she is writing it many years later. It begins with July's conception in the rape of her mother by the overseer. And the continuous narrative ends with an event even more cold hearted and brutal.In between, it tells the story of July, a sly, witty slave who becomes a house slave and, after manumission, continues on as a house servant.It is hard for me to capture just how compelling, well written, beautifully imagined, funny, and tragic the book is. So you should read it for yourself.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Long Song is set in 1820s Jamaica, a turbulent period in the island’s history as the slaves labouring on sugar plantations fought to be free. Miss July, housemaid to the ample Caroline Mortimer, owner of Amity Sugar Plantation, narrates. The Long Song is a framing narrative: at the same time July is narrating the story of the Amity slaves, she is writing a book at the urging of her son. She tells her readers, “your storyteller is a woman possessed of a forthright tongue and little ink.” Indeed, readers will soon understand that July has no time for “the puff and twaddle of some white lady’s mind.” (ch 1) Hilariously, she warns one last time before launching into her tale:“Let me confess this [forthrightness] without delay so you might consider whether my tale is one in which you can find an interest. If not, then be on your way, for there are plenty books to satisfy if words flowing free as the droppings that fall from the backside of a mule is your desire.” (ch 1)July is delightful, sometimes hilarious, company throughout The Long Song. I enjoyed her sparse, straightforward style of storytelling. She is compassionate and honest, but never sensational; and her voice is steady and confident. She knows the story of the Amity slaves is her story, and she tells it well.I particularly liked that Andrea Levy is able to write about a sensitive subject without sensationalizing and sentimentalizing. July leaves readers no doubt as to the violence of the period; but violence is not the point of her story. In the same way, Levy is authentic and believable as she writes about the lives of Jamaica’s slaves post-abolition. Their freedom, long sought and hard won, came with a hefty price. Indeed, in its early years, the "victory" of freedom wore the face of destitution, even starvation. Recommended to readers who enjoy historical fiction, readers interested in slavery and abolition.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    As the child of a slave, July is plucked from her Mama’s side to become companion to the petty-minded white sister of the Amity plantation’s Massa, a transition that finds her well placed to watch the consequences of the newly granted freedom. Freedom that seems to July - still curiously chained to the will of Caroline Howarth - a powerful but elusive concept.Historical fiction should, I think, make of the history to which it is tied another character, one that moves and gives context to the depicted lives; and that is exactly what Andrea Levy does in The Long Song. Miss July’s life is not merely enacted with the scope of the timeline; it is entirely shaped and engulfed by it. From the easy contempt with which she is plucked from her mother, to the way in which she is drawn to the perceived power of being the mistress of Caroline’s husband later on, Miss July’s relationship with ‘Free’ is the important one in this book.This wasn’t an unflawed tale – even Miss July’s tart observation gives no nuance to the character of Miss Caroline, who was depicted as a creature of banal ignorance and shallowness to the point of caricature. While many such negligent (or even negligible) people held the fates of slaves and ‘free’ servants, it became difficult to respond to that character – either pityingly or with disgust - without feeling manipulated by the author. There were also times when some of the characters’ histories were given in chunks that jarred with the flow of the rest of the story. Otherwise, I found this compellingly told, moving and insightful. It was my intention to read Small Island, but found this first, and nothing about it puts me off my original goal.

Book preview

The Long Song - Andrea Levy

PART 1

CHAPTER 1

IT WAS FINISHED ALMOST as soon as it began. Kitty felt such little intrusion from the overseer Tam Dewar’s part that she decided to believe him merely jostling her from behind like any rough, grunting, huffing white man would if they were crushed together within a crowd. Except upon this occasion, when he finally released himself from out of her, he thrust a crumpled bolt of yellow and black cloth into Kitty’s hand as a gift. This was more vexing to her than that rude act—for she was left to puzzle upon whether she should be grateful to this white man for this limp offering or not . . .

Reader, my son tells me that this is too indelicate a commencement of any tale. Please pardon me, but your storyteller is a woman possessed of a forthright tongue and little ink. Waxing upon the nature of trees when all know they are green and lush upon this island, or birds which are plainly plentiful and raucous, or taking good words to whine upon the cruelly hot sun, is neither prudent nor my fancy. Let me confess this without delay so you might consider whether my tale is one in which you can find an interest. If not, then be on your way, for there are plenty books to satisfy if words flowing free as the droppings that fall from the backside of a mule is your desire.

Go to any shelf that groans under a weight of books and there, wrapped in leather and stamped in gold, will be volumes whose contents will find you meandering through the puff and twaddle of some white lady’s mind. You will see trees aplenty, birds of every hue and oh, a hot, hot sun residing there. That white missus will have you acquainted with all the many tribulations of her life upon a Jamaican sugar plantation before you have barely opened the cover. Two pages upon the scarcity of beef. Five more upon the want of a new hat to wear with her splendid pink taffeta dress. No butter but only a wretched alligator pear again! is surely a hardship worth the ten pages it took to describe it. Three chapters is not an excess to lament upon a white woman of discerning mind who finds herself adrift in a society too dull for her. And as for the indolence and stupidity of her slaves (be sure you have a handkerchief to dab away your tears), only need of sleep would stop her taking several more volumes to pronounce upon that most troublesome of subjects.

And all this particular distress so there might be sugar to sweeten the tea and blacken the teeth of the people in England. But do not take my word upon it, peruse the volumes for yourself. For I have. And it was shocking to have so uplifting an act as reading invite some daft white missus to belch her foolishness into my head.

So I will not worry myself for your loss if it is those stories you require. But stay if you wish to hear a tale of my making.

As I write, I have a cup of sweetened tea resting beside me (although not quite sweet enough for my taste, but sweetness comes at a dear price here upon this sugar island); the lamp is glowing sufficient to cast a light upon the paper in front of me; the window is open and a breeze is cooling upon my neck. But wait . . . for an annoying insect has decided to throw itself repeatedly against my lamp. Shooing will not remove it, for it believes the light is where salvation lies. But its insistent buzzing is distracting me. So I have just squashed it upon an open book. As soon as I have wiped its bloody carcass from the page (for it is in a volume that my son was reading), I will continue my tale.

CHAPTER 2

JULY WAS BORN UPON a cane piece.

Her mother, bending over double, hacked with her cane bill into a thick stem of cane. But it did not topple with just one blow. Weary, she straightened to let the fierce torrent of raindrops that were falling run their cooling relief upon her face and neck. She blinked against the rain, wiping the palm of her hand across her forehead. When the serrated edges of the cane leaves dropped their abrasive grit into her eyes, she tilted her head back to permit the rain to wash them with its balm. Then she stooped to grab the base of the cane once more to strike it with a further blow.

So intent was she upon seeing that the weeping cane was stripped of its leaves—even in the dampening rain its brittle edges flew around her like thistledown—that she did not notice she had just dropped a child from her womb. July was born right there—slipping out to fall bloody and quivering upon a spiky layer of trash.

As July lay vulnerable upon the ground, she viewed the nightmare of tall canes that loured dark, ragged and unruly around her, and felt the hem of a rough woollen skirt drag its heavy wetness across her naked body. Then, all at once, she beheld—wrestling a long spike of cane, swinging it in the air and slicing at its length and leaves before hurling the stripped pole away—the mighty black woman that was her mother. Her mother’s arms, flexing under this strenuous work, were as robust as the legs of a horse in full gallop. Her thick neck looked to be crafted from some cleverly worked wood. Her bare breast, running with rain and sweat, glistened as if lacquered.

This colossal woman was still determined upon her work, unaware that she had mislaid anything. When July let forth a fierce, raw bellow that rustled the canes and affrighted the birds, her mother, cane bill raised, suddenly stopped to wonder upon the source of that desperate yell and saw, for the first time, her misplaced child lying there upon the trash. July’s mother cleaned the blade of her cane bill and slipped it into the cloth around her waist. With one hand she then commenced to unwind a scarf that was wrapping her head, whilst with the other hand she gathered up her newborn child in the cup of her palm. Within a fleeting moment that headscarf had July swaddled secure and warm against the solid wall of her mother’s back—whilst her mother, withdrawing the cane bill from the band at her waist, continued with her work.

And so ends the story of July’s birth—a story that was more thrilling than anything the rascal spider Anancy could conjure. With some tellings it was not the rain that beat down upon July’s tender, newborn body, but the hot sun, whose fierce heat baked the blood from her birth into a hard scabrous crust upon her naked flesh. Other times, it was a wind that was blowing with so fierce a breath that her mother had to catch July by one leg before her baby was blown out of the cane field, over the big house, and off into the clouds. While a further version had a tiger, with its long, spiky snout and six legs, sniffing at the baby July, thinking her as food. No matter what glorious heights her tall tale acquired, July always avowed that she had been born upon a cane piece.

But, reader, I cannot allow my narrative to be muddled by such an ornate invention, for upon some later page you may feel to accuse me of deception when, in point, I am speaking fact, even though the contents may seem equally preposterous. Although you may deem your storyteller humdrum for what hereinafter follows it is, with no fear of fantasy, the actual truth of July’s delivery into this world—and you may take my word upon it.

Kitty, July’s mama, gave birth to her in her dwelling hut. For eight long hours Kitty did pace about that hut—first five steps in one direction, then a further five in the other. All the while with her palms pressed to the small of her back, for she feared the protrusion at her belly had the might to pitch her pell-mell on to the ground. The coarse linen shirt she wore was so sodden with sweat as to appear to be made of gauze, and did bind about her tight as a dressing. At times she stopped in her feverish pacing to place her hands high upon the wall, lean her weight on to her arms and pant with the fury of a mad dog.

Kitty’s perspiration was turning the soil underneath her feet to a slippery layer of mud. So Rose, the woman who was attending her, requested that Kitty stoop a little that she might be permitted to mop her face and neck with rags—for Kitty was nearly six feet tall and Rose no more than four. Rose had had two children in her childbearing days—one was delivered stiff as stale bread and the other was sold away before she had properly finished suckling him. But she was the favoured attendant for births upon the plantation, for children born by her physic thrived with the vigour of the most indulged white missus child. But Kitty would not stoop to permit Rose to wipe her. Rose was forced to jump, like some feeble house slave charged to dust a high shelf, to brush the cloth across Kitty’s forehead.

Neither would Kitty smell the bunch of sticks that Rose wafted around her, ‘Come, it will soothe. Smell,’ Rose insisted. When, finally, Rose pushed the smelly bundle against Kitty’s nose, Kitty began at once to choke upon their pungency. She then wrested the sticks from out Rose’s hand and threw them upon the ground. The strip of goat skin with which Rose had wanted to rub Kitty’s bucking belly had Kitty crying out, ‘No touch me, no touch me!’ Fortuitously for Rose, she ducked just before Kitty’s hand lashed out to swipe her across the room—for it was performed with such fierceness that the diminutive Rose would surely have found herself embedded within the wattle of the wall.

Then Rose pleaded that at least Kitty should eat some mouthfuls of breadfruit that had been left for her. When Kitty refused, Rose ate it herself while repeating, in tones that ranged from commanding to begging, that Kitty should squat upon the mattress to find relief from the pain of this birthing. For over an hour did Rose implore her, until Kitty, screeching louder than a cockerel before the dawn, cried, ‘Hush, Miss Rose—me caan suffer yer jabber no more.’

But Kitty did at that moment fall upon her knees and, with her heavy belly brushing the dirt floor, crawl upon the mat. Soon the trash, which was the substance of her mattress, was soaked through with Kitty’s sweat—it squelched underneath her as she writhed, tormented, for some position that might ease her pain. But at last Rose could reach all the parts of Kitty that she required in order to commence her fabled physic. Rose, calling from the door of the hut, commanded some children to fill a pail with water from the river. She then cursed at the tiny drip of water that the useless pickney handed her back, before shooing them from the dwelling. But Rose dipped in a rag and pressed the cool water against Kitty’s dry and cracked lips.

It was after a further two hours that Kitty began to howl. Kneeling upon the mattress, her hands upon the wall, she screamed that this pain was like no other that she had endured. Oh come, driver, lash her, brand and scorch her, for Kitty was sure no trifling pain of human kind could ever injure her again. This pain was jumbie-made; its claws were digging deep inside her so this child might be born.

‘Me must dead, Miss Rose,’ Kitty roared. ‘Me must dead!’

‘Pickney soon come, soon come now,’ Rose tenderly whispered.

‘Pickney no come. Me must dead here,’ Kitty wailed.

It was then the overseer, Tam Dewar, entered in upon the dwelling shouting, ‘Why is there so much noise? Shut up, damn you. My head aches from it!’

Aroused from his supper table by the unholy row that had reached his ears, he was breathing heavy as a man sorely vexed. Until, that is, the stench from within Kitty’s dwelling began to assail him. His face, that had been wrinkled with fury, began to contort into a sickened grimace—like he was chewing upon rancid meat. He placed his lamp upon the ground so he might better rummage for his handkerchief to muffle his nose and mouth, before exclaiming through the cloth, ‘What is happening in here?’

Rose, curtseying to the overseer, said, ‘She birthing, massa—soon come,’ while Kitty quickly laid herself down flat upon the mattress, covering up as best she could with the wet cloth of her shirt. She set herself to be still and raised her eyes to look upon Tam Dewar’s crooked face. In the cast of the lamplight his mouth looked all the more twisted, his hairless head all the more like it was crowned with the shell of an egg. But Kitty could not be quiet for long, for a pickney the size of the moon was pushing out from within her. She let forth a yell so fierce that it buckled Tam Dewar at his knees and caused him to wince as if it were he that had the greater affliction.

‘Be quiet, be quiet, I tell you!’ he squealed before commanding Rose, ‘Stop up her mouth!’

Rose gazed upon this man in puzzlement. ‘Stuff up her mouth with rags, come on, come on,’ he insisted once more. Rose took a rag, dipping it in the water from the pail and brushed it against Kitty’s lips. But Tam Dewar, exhaling with annoyance, commanded, ‘Not like that!’ He snatched at the rag that Rose held, then forced the damp cloth down into Kitty’s mouth. ‘Like this, you fool, like this.’

Rose protested, ‘Massa, she birthin’, she birthin’!’ as Kitty choked to accommodate the bulk of cloth in her mouth. Soon Kitty bit down hard to catch the overseer’s finger within her teeth, for this white man’s fist was blocking her throat.

‘Damn you,’ he wailed. He wrenched his finger from her bite, then whipped back his hand to slap Kitty around the head.

Rose hastened to stand between Kitty and this white man saying, ‘She birthin’, massa, she birthin’, massa . . .’ for she could see this man was preparing to strike Kitty again. ‘Pity, massa, pity, no lash her, she birthin’, massa,’ Rose pleaded.

Tam Dewar threw the tiny figure of Rose aside and was ready to strike Kitty once more, for the impertinence that still throbbed at his fingertips. While Kitty, cowering from the coming blow, wrapped one arm around her massive belly and thrust out a splayed hand at this man to keep him far from her. And in that moment, Tam Dewar was stilled. He stared at her then dropped his raised hand. He knelt down next to Kitty, palms raised, saying, ‘Shhhh, shhhh,’ to calm her as he spoke softly to her. ‘My sister has sent me some strawberry conserve from Scotland. It’s very fine. Delicious. I was just eating it, but then the noise you were making . . . I cannot stand the noise. I have a pain in my head, you see, that I cannot remove. So you must be quiet.’ He lifted up the lamp so Kitty might behold his earnest face. She saw a dollop of strawberry jam upon his cheek and smelled the sweet confection upon his breath. He turned, as if to leave, but then, leaning over again said, ‘Hush, Kitty or I’ll take a whip to you, so help me, God, I will, because I cannot stand the noise.’

Kitty made no reply to this man, but bit down hard upon the cloth that was still within her mouth so she would make no sound that could cause his mood to change. For Kitty had managed to live without feeling the lash from his whip for four years. But this white man had fathered the child she was birthing and if he was not gone soon, she thought to rise from the mattress, grab this ugly bakkra by the leg, swing him above her head and hurl him like a piece of cane so far-far that he would land head first in a heap of trash upon some other talked of island. But she just bit harder upon the rags, as he, pressing his handkerchief once more to his nose, stood up as if to take his leave. He made two steps before remembering a thought. Heedful to point at both his slaves in turn he said, ‘And be careful with that wee baby—it will be worth a great deal of money.’

When the pickney was finally released from within Kitty she yelled with so mighty an exhalation that the trees bent as if a hurricane had just passed. Tam Dewar, startled by that immense cry, banged his fist hard upon his supper table and his precious strawberry conserve did topple down to spill upon the floor.

CHAPTER 3

SO, READER, KITTY’S ONLY child is born in upon the world at last. Kitty called her daughter July, for when she was still a callow girl, Miss Martha, who did oversee the infant workers of the third gang, had once ventured to teach Kitty to write in words the months that make up the year. Although the month of her pickney’s birth was December, it was only the graceful wave of Miss Martha’s arm as she scratched the flowing curls of the word July in the dirt that the older Kitty could call to mind. Kitty softly whispered the word July into her pickney’s ear and July her daughter became.

And what a squealing, tempestuous, fuss-making child she was. The quivering pink tongue and toothless gums in July’s shrieking mouth were more familiar to her mama than her baby’s arms and feet. With such agitation coming hourly from this newly born creature, Kitty did believe that this pickney must have been ripped from some more charmed existence. That she howled for the injustice that found her now a slave in an airless hut, in a crib too small, and being mothered by an ugly-skinned black woman who did not have the faintest notion as to why her pickney did yell so.

Kitty paced her tiny hut for most of the hours in the night to try to bring peace to this cursed child’s heart. Then, when the child was calmed enough for Kitty’s eyelids to at last close in sleep, the driver blowing a shrill note upon the conch bade her open them once more for another day of work. Only when Kitty was ready to feed this baby, so her working day could commence, did this child decide the time was right to sleep like the dead. And only after she had wrapped the sleeping child to her back and begun her work on the second gang—clearing and carrying the bundles of spent cane from the factory to the trash house—did Kitty feel the gentle swelling of her pickney’s lungs as July awakened to demand her missing food.

Oh, pity poor Kitty, for no sound so vexed the negroes that worked around her than the constant screeching of the child that was bound to her throughout the day. All in her second gang agreed that not even the shrill creaking of the carts that carried the cane from the fields to the mill—yes, even the broken-down one that Cornet Jump did drive—did pain them so much.

The call of the driver, Mason Jackson, as he summoned luckless slaves to unload that heaping cane from the carts was piercing—true—but it did not rupture the ears like that pickney. And the groaning sighs that always exhaled from Miss Anne and Miss Betsy as their sore heads were piled up high with the spiky bundles of cane, rang quite soft in comparison. As did their slip-slop shuffling as they humped the weeping poles to where they would be crushed.

The rasping of the wooden cattle mill as it laggardly turned and the weary clip-clopping of the beasts’ hooves as Benjamin Brown guided them to tread their pointless progress around and around, never again seemed quite so loud to him. Even the squelching of the cloying juice being squeezed from the splitting poles or the raucous jabber of Miss Bessy and Miss Sarah as they reaped the spent cane from the floor about him, did not play so sharply upon his nerves.

And Dublin Hilton, the distiller-man (him who did know if the liquor would granulate from just gazing upon it or inhaling the vapour), will tell you that not even the crackling of the flames under his coppers, the bubbling slurp of the boiling sugar, nor the deep rumbling from the hogsheads as the filled barrels were rolled along the ground, could keep that pickney’s howl from finding his ears.

Come, only the firing of the driver’s cowskin whip, as he directed which to be taken where, did all within that second gang confess, was more vexing to them than the torturous din that emitted from the tiny creature tied to Miss Kitty’s back.

‘A likkle rum ’pon the child’s tongue, Miss Kitty,’ Peggy Jump, from the first gang, did yell from her door at the close of each day. While, ‘Shake the pickney soft!’ was Elizabeth Millar’s suggestion and, ‘See Obeah—she mus’ haf a likkle spell,’ was the thinking of Kitty’s friend, Miss

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