Customer Reviews
Not bad, but not outstanding - By: Mister Hobgoblin, 17 Aug 2010 
The Long Song is a novel set around the last years of slavery & first years of emancipation in Jamaica. It follows the fortunes of one woman, July, as she struggles for survival in this brutal & uncertain time.
It is difficult to criticize a book which is so obviously championing a worthy cause - & there is much to praise. The narrator has a distinctive voice, speaking in patois (which will doubtless irritate some readers) although this does seem to slip on occasion. When it works, though, it lends a degree of authenticity to the narrative. But whilst the overalll feel of the novel is very positive, it's difficult to pin down exactly what makes it so strong. The plot is actuallly not that interesting. Perhaps it is the personal struggles & conflicts that makes it work; perhaps it is the hint of self-justification on the part of Caroline Mortimer, the white mistress.
In terms of the plot itself, there is a suspicion that July's suffering has been laid on with a trowel. She has experienced just about the worst treatment a slave could expect - rape, violence, separation from children, sadistic overseers & the slave owners from Hell. The works. And there is seldom a light moment to lift the spirits (compare & contrast with the human spirit shown by the captives in Emma Donoghue's Room). Can people, even slaves enduring maltreatment, continue to live in such relentless misery with no degree of acclimatization?
The nearest we get to levity is the relationship between July & Robert Goodwin, an English overseer who comes to the Caribbean with a mission to do better for the former slaves. Needless to say, it doesn't work out & we find yet another cross for July to bear.
A talking point in The Long Song is the bookending with an introduction & endnote. The idea is that the story was presented by Thomas Kinsman as related by his mother. His mother in turn narrates a story in third person about a woman who may or may not be herself - although actuallly there is little doubt, even from the outset. This is then interspersed with present tense corrections & asides to Thomas in the first person. This feels like an unnecessary distraction; it adds no value & creates confusion as the reader tried to pick apart the conundrum of who, exactly, is narrating at any given point & through what filters. The Long Song was a strong story which deserved to stand on its own merits rather than be steeped in trickery for trickery's own sake.
For a superior post-slavery novel I would recommend Austin Clarke's excellent The Polished Hoe. That deals with the legacy of slavery on the fictional island of Bimshire (Barbados) where the mixed race overseers picked up where the slave owners left off. That, too, is written in patois, albeit rather more consistent but also more challlenging to read. The plot is much tauter, the action is more shocking & the intrigue is deeper. It sets out emotional conflicts between right & wrong - & righting wrongs.
So The Long Song is not bad - probably worthy of its Booker longlisting & potentiallly worthy of shortlisting - but neither is it outstanding.
An unforgettable story - By: C. Colley, 12 Aug 2010 
The Long Song by Andrea Levy
I know Andrea Levy's books have been around a few years now but it's only in the last year or so that I have got round to reading some of them & I'm reallly glad that I didn't let them pass me by.
I loved 'Smalll Island' & this one 'The Long Song' which is on the Man Booker long-list for 2010, is equallly as good.
This novel is basicallly a fictional telling of the Baptist War & the events that occurred in the slave rebellion of 1831/32. It's narrated by Miss July, house slave to Caroline Mortimer, the owner of Amity plantation & the plot reveals much about Miss July's early life, up to the telling of this story as an older woman. The book covers the terrible treatment of many slaves on the plantation, the slave rebellion & eventuallly leading up to their freedom (of sorts). It's written in such away that the events & characters were often easy to picture in my mind, sometimes unpleasant pictures that made me cringe but it's not without humour too. I loved the headstrong narrator, Miss July & the unusual way this story is told.
I've learnt a lot from reading this book. Research is at our fingertips these days & encouraged by this book I did look up more detailed factual information about it. Reading this account was a much more enjoyable way of learning & it sticks quite close to the real event. I'd love to see this book win the Man Booker, it deserves to do well. I know it will stay with me long after reading it.
The Long Song - By: TomCat, 09 Aug 2010 This review is quite long, but there's a lot to talk about, so please forgive its length:
As I read this book, I could almost hear the salivating of educationalists up & down the country. 'The Long Song' is destined for the A-Level English Literature syllabus. I don't say this in disparagement or praise, merely in prophecy; for The Long Song occupies a comfortable middle-ground of modern Black writing. It's not as literary or challlenging as Toni Morrison's genius masterwork 'Beloved', but it's not as educationallly dense as Henry Louis Gates' 'Classic Slave Narratives'. It would sit well with 'The Colour Purple' or 'To Kill a Mockingbird' upon the bookshelves of the school library. The Long Song has alll the facets of modern writing that the architects of the current English syllabi seem to value so much: a minority voice, historical realism, controversial scenes of rape and, most importantly, a simple story arc that travels from innocence to redemption via suffering & loss.
But I don't want to be too reductive in my review of this novel. Indeed, when I discovered that 'The Long Song' is a book about slavery, sisterhood, racism & rape, part of me groaned as I anticipated yet another addition to the overloaded slave-narrative genre - a genre that is veering dangerously close to cliché & self-parody. Yet I was pleasantly surprised by the book; it isn't the pinnacle of its oeuvre, but it's a solid, well-written & moving effort.
'The Long Song' is narrated by July; an eighty-year-old former slave who worked on the Jamaican cane plantations. July is coerced by her son, a renowned printer, to write down her life's story - particularly her early years of slavery during the Baptist War of the Eighteen-Thirties. July narrates in the first-person singular. However, Andrea Levy's approach to this narrator is very unusual - July only speaks in the first-person when employing the present tense. When she is recounting her experience as a slave, she changes narratorial register & refers to herself in the third person. Thus the novel gives the impression that it has two narrators, when in fact there's only one - a narrator who constantly changes the pronoun direction of her narrative voice: using first-person for the present-tense, but third-person for the past-tense.
Thus 'The Long Song' employs that ever-so-trendy device of inter-textual revelation, whereby the novel you are reading is, supposedly, a biography written by one of its own characters - The Long Song even includes a fake afterword that's "written" by July's son, Thomas. I have several problems with this technique; firstly, it's a ubiquitous trick in the modern literary zeitgeist: it's just everywhere (see: 'Atonement', 'The Museum of Innocence', 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveller', 'Birdsong' or 'City of Glass' - to name just a few examples). Secondly, I think it's a rather lazy way of attributing a sense of textual authority & literary depth to a novel. Thirdly, the illusion is entirely unsustainable, as the name `Andrea Levy' (or Orhan Pamuk, or Paul Auster, or whoever) is printed on the front of the novel, reinforcing a sense of artifice & deconstructing the intended chimera: that this is a genuine history written down by one of its survivors.
This may be cynical of me, but it seems that this kind of inter-textual game is just the easiest way to add narrative complexity to a novel - 'The Long Song' fictionalises the story of its own creation, but in a pointless way. There's even a linguistic obsession for ripped paper & spilt ink. Don't miss-understand me; I do appreciate novels with intricate narratorial layers, but this particular technique ("oh look, the book I'm reading is a novel within the novel") is so over-used by modern writers that it's become completely tedious. However, the 18th Century-esque woodcut cover design of this particular book is a nice little touch.
Clichéd novel-within-a-novel ideas aside, The Long Song is beautifully, beautifully written. Levy employs an effective blend of standardised spelling with dialectic direct speech; for example, in this first-chapter scene of child-birth:
The pain was jumbie-made; its claws were digging deep inside her so this child might be born:
"Oh me must dead massa" Kitty roared, "me must dead!"
"Your pickney soon come now" Rose whispered.
Every sentence is well-balanced, imaginatively formed & beautifully expressed: there's not a word wasted or out-of-place in 'The Long Song'. This reallly is a linguisticallly impressive novel.
This book also achieves a striking convergence of the tragic with the comic. There are scenes of heart-rending despair that are so powerful that I had to put the book down & contemplate their impact before continuing. One such moment forms the opening of the novel; when nine-year-old July is taken from her mother by a white woman, because this rich, white land-owner fancies July as a pet to serve her about the house. July never sees her mother again. It's powerful stuff, made even more so by the wonderfully emotive writing.
But, as I say, it's not alll dower; parts of the novel are raucously funny. When alll the white members of the plantation house-hold leave the mansion to put down a riot, the remaining black slaves put on a hilarious lord-of-the-manner charade; treating each other like servants, demanding "more wine" & addressing each other as "dirty slaves" in mockery of their white masters.
The first-half of the novel is intense, well-plotted & builds & builds to an event of catastrophic significance (the Jamaican abolitionist riots of 1831). The second-half, by comparison, is messy, lacks pace & even attempts an insipid love story. It's a great shame - had the first 150 pages been expanded to form a full-length novel, it would be an almost perfect literary achievement; instead, the drama & tension, pathos & impact of the first-half is somewhat undermined by the much-less interesting second part.
I'd like to make a few final points about the themes of the novel. 'The Long Song' gives a harrowing account of slavery, details the traumas of rape & poverty & the discomforts of the period. This is partly achieved through a linguistic fetishism for bodily functions & fluids; barely a page goes by without explicit mention of menstrual blood, breast milk, semen, spit, mucus, faeces, urine, sweat & tears. It's a powerful act of synaesthesia, but somewhat over-played by Levy. I'm not quite sure why Levy felt a need to draw such repetitive attention to the physical processes of the body. I suppose it gives a sense of gritty realism, & it contrasts the physical, bodily duties of the slaves with the luxurious lifestyle of the so-callled white plantocracy - but as a stylistic trait, this insistence on bodily functions is too monotonous. Almost every conversation begins with a reminder that the speakers have "renk breath" & "dirt-encrusted nostrils". I think that such statements would have greater impact if they were used more sparingly.
In summary, 'The Long Song' is a good novel. It's not without its flaws - but the writing is accomplished, the characters are very well conceived & the subject matter is powerful, gripping & kept me interested. There is a lot of this sort of slave-narrative fiction floating about these days, but 'The Long Song' is one of the better examples. I would recommend it; even if you find the plot & pacing to be a bit messy, you should enjoy basking in the beauty of Levy's writing, in the charming comic scenes & the harrowing moments of tragedy. Just don't pay too much heed to the novel-within-a-novel trope. If I'm honest, most of what I've listed as "flaws" in the book are reallly just irritations to my own taste, & are not objective failings. I still believe that 'The Long Song' will make its way into the school Literature syllabi within ten years; if only because the subject matter & characters are eminently & easily study-able. It's the sort of book that is very much en-vogue with the current assemblage of exam-setters. It may even become one of those odd modern-classics; a memorable novel that strikes a chord with the public despite its few short-comings.
So, alll that remains is for you to turn your papers over, read the questions carefully & decide whether or not you want to want to invest in this novel for yourself. Remember to show your workings.
The Long Song by Andrea Levy - By: Shoreline28, 08 Aug 2010 An unforgettable book. I recommend reading it. It is however, not a light subject & everything that happens seems overwhelmingly negative. The mothers' love for their children is the only uplifting feature of the story & one child is given away & another abducted. A mother's frantic attempt to rescue her child, the main character leads to the former's death. I now want to lend out the book to everyone I know as reading it is an education about slavery in Jamaica in the 1830s.
Warm and realistic - By: A. L. Rutter, 04 Aug 2010 The Long Song chronicles, from a first person perspective, the life of July, a female slave born & brought up on the plantation Amity. She speaks about her life at the behest of her son, starting with the rape of her mother by a cruel overseer, through her time as a house maid for a white lady callled Caroline Mortimer, the two children she bears, & touches on the dying days of slavery, including the Baptist Wars.
The book is written with simplicity & grace, using the Caribbean patois to great effect. July's voice is warm & cheeky, insisting that she will tell her story without "...words flowing free as the droppings that falll from the backside of a mile..." The words bounce from the page, idiosyncratic & humorous: 'fatty batty', 'bug-a-bug', 'licky-licky'.
With the prose reading so smoothly, it is easy to disregard this novel as being merely light & readable. It deals, rather, with the true realities of slavery & plantation life: the gulf between the house slaves & those who worked the fields; the hateful mistreatment & casual cruelty by the white people of those who slaved for them; and, indeed, the undercurrents of tension between the blacks regarding the colour of their skin: "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; the the quadroon that enjoys white relations will give to this world a mustee; the mustee will beget a mustiphino; & 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."
Despite the weighty subject matter, Levy manages to avoid it becoming a depressing read. In fact, we delight in the japes played by the slaves on their white owners, such as when they switch the good table linen for soiled bedsheets during an important Christmas meal. However, there are a couple of occasions when the sheer horrors of the slaves' lives is brought home to us, such as here when Kitty carries dung in a container upon her head: "...the solid odour did choke her at the throat, after mighty coughing & a few strong inhalations, alll the air about Kitty, be it sweet or bitter, came to smell like shit, so the offence was lost. But for her tongue there was no such accommodation. When, unwittingly, a piece would falll into her open mouth... it would burn so fierce upon her tongue that she feared a hole was being bored right through it."
The white people in this tale are, universallly, to be derided or hated or pitied - none of them emerge well, but alll are three dimensional with realistic motives ascribed to them, such as Robert Goodwin who seeks to do well by the blacks he owns right up until the point where they refuse to work for him.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Long Song - in fact, my only complaint was minor & thus: the story was written from first person perspective which meant that a) sometimes July wouldn't have known things that she was presented as knowing e.g. how her mistress feels when smelling the bodies of her slaves & b) we missed hearing an awful lot of external events, since July herself did not see them or know of them.
Other than this, The Long Song was a fine book - telling an authentic tale about a very shameful point in British history. It represents a feat in research & imagination, combining to present a novel that, though slight, presents an honest account of what it must have been to live as a slave in the 1800s. I found it entertaining, funny & horrific by turns & the story of July will stay with me for a while.
Man Booker Prize thoughts: I feel like a fraud talking about this novel's chances at the Booker Prize. I genuinely don't think I've read any of the previous winners, unless by accident & alll unaware! This being the first novel of the long list I've read, as well, doesn't make it any easier setting out my thoughts. All I can say about its chances is that I think it effectively combines literary skill with a damn good story, that also conveys a weighty message. If this is what the Booker judges are looking for, then I can see The Long Song making it to the short list.
