The Long Song: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

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Only she removed all the blinkers, and steps inside her characters and shows them warts and all, making this uncomfortable reading at times and yet more realistic than most. For even those well intended were a product of their time and of white privilege. After a new overseer arrives and a love triangle develops, lately followed my massacre and tragedy, July then skips forward twenty or so years and we never learn what happened to July through this period of time, though we can presume it wasn’t very pleasant. She doesn’t wish to talk about it after all. So we have a half story, a story of the injustice one woman felt in such a world. We see the end of slavery, and the real transition the slaves felt afterward. Although they had more freedom, the serfdom did not end overnight. Levy delves deep into the historical issues of the time, and makes this part of history, the history of the Caribbean slave, known. mp_sf_list_3_description:The Long Song was filmed in the Dominican Republic, a setting that offered grueling hot days, but also surprising beauty. “It looked like a film set,” Hayley Atwell said. “When we were at that plantation house and there would be a sunset, there was a moment when we just stopped filming for a second, and everyone went onto the veranda…just look at these purples and oranges. The plantation was on this kind of hilly land and it looked like a carpet of neon green. It didn’t look real at all. It was a very lush place.” mp_sf_list_0_description: Told through the eyes of July, a slave and spirited survivor, The Long Song is set in the 19^th century and explores the last days of slavery in British-ruled Jamaica. The story is about injustices humans inflict on each other and the unexpected ways in which people’s humanity can overcome harsh circumstances.

The Long Song by Andrea Levy | Waterstones

Without wishing to give too much of the story away there is one particular scene which was agonizing. The child July and her mother are walking towards the fields when the plantation owner and his sister, a woman whose giggle worthy silliness becomes something monsterous with absolute power, meet them. The newly widowed sister slowly takes a fancy to the little girl and decides at the end of the meeting to take her as her own. In the hands of Andrea Levy the writing of this seen is matter of fact but builds to an incredible dread as the curiosity of a child, the growing realization of the mother come crashing against a whimsical act of inhumanity by the plantations owners sister who give no more thought to the abduction then someone taking a kitten. The whole thing capped by the plantation owners disppassionate discussion of the work attributes of his slaves. For me that one scene brought to life the history of slavery in a way that makes you wiser in a way a hundred recitation of the facts would be unable to do. In the ability to take history and make it relatable by showing the effects on everyday humans it reminded me of "A Fine Balance" by Rohinton Mistry.The Long Song is a historical novel by Andrea Levy published in 2010 that was the recipient of the Walter Scott Prize. It was Levy's fifth and final novel, following the 2004 publication of Small Island. In December 2018, a three-part television adaptation of the same name was broadcast on BBC One; The Long Song was aired on PBS in February 2021. 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. Small Island introduced Andrea Levy to America and was acclaimed as “a triumph” ( San Francisco Chronicle). It won both the Orange Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and has sold over a million copies worldwide. With The Long Song, Levy once again reinvents the historical novel. Notable Books of 2010". The New York Times. 24 November 2010. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 7 July 2020.

The Long Song: Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010

Long song was awarded the Walter Scott prize for historical fiction. It was also shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker prize. The Man Booker prize 2010 shortlist". The Guardian. 7 September 2010. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 July 2020. The book you are now holding within your hand was born of a craving. My mama had a story—a story that lay so fat within her breast that she felt impelled, by some force which was mightier than her own will, to relay this tale to me, her son. Her intention was that, once knowing the tale, I would then, at some other date, convey its narrative to my own daughters. And so it would go on. The fable would never be lost and, in its several recitals, might gain a majesty to rival the legends told whilst pointing at the portraits or busts in any fancy great house upon this island of Jamaica.Dowell, Ben. "Hayley Atwell, Lenny Henry and Tamara Lawrance cast in new BBC period drama The Long Song". Radio Times. 13 July 2018. Levy admits in her own notes on writing the novel to the anticipated difficulty of writing about slavery "without it turning into a harrowing tale of violence and misery". July arose from that anxiety as the answer to it. As a narrator she is unreliable, one-eyed and sometimes mendacious, which is paradoxically why we trust her version of events above the orthodox white historian's view. She is not overly interested in the historical details (though the author has clever devices to give us just as much as we need) preferring to let the story unfold for us through her experiences and her relationships. She is often self-deluded, succeeds in fooling us too at times, and we love her for it.

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

In my opinion, Andrea Levy is quite a talented writer. My first experience was "Small Island", which I awarded 5 stars. There has to be something outstanding for me to give such an accolade, sadly, "The Long Song" delivered a story that was quite average in my opinion, although I think it could have been better, had she done some things differently. Frankly, I doubt in fifty books from now, I will remember little about this story. Slavery is a subject that has inspired some magnificent fiction (think of Toni Morrison's Beloved or Valerie Martin's Property), but I had some misgivings: might it not, in this case, make for over-serious writing, especially for a novelist as comically inclined as Levy? But she dares to write about her subject in an entertaining way without ever trivialising it and The Long Song reads with the sort of ebullient effortlessness that can only be won by hard work. After the book was released, research by a family member proved just how personal The Long Song truly was. “It was all done and then my niece found out a lot about our own family history,” Levy explained. “She found out that my great grandfather was born a slave. His mother was a housekeeper on a plantation called Mesopotamia and her mother was a field slave called Minnie. We found out that my great, great-grandfather was from Gainsborough in Britain, his name was William Ridsguard and he was the attorney on the plantation, and he had a child with his house keeper…that child, Richard Ridsguard was my great grandfather.” Levy was the daughter of mixed race parents who emigrated from the Caribbean to England in the 1960s and the interactions between the immigrant (coloured) and the host (white) cultures are the subject of all her novels. Nos encontramos ante una historia sencilla, en la que las cosas que pasan, aunque puedan destrozar el corazón del lector, tampoco le sorprende por lo esperables que resultan. Muchas veces de una forma muy cruel. Es un libro de ritmo apacible la mayor parte del tiempo, que sin embargo tiene una fuerza que hace que todo fluya perfectamente. Personalmente, tengo que reconocer que después de las primeras partes, hubo un cuarto de obra o así en que me aburrí un poco leyendo, pero rápidamente eso pasó, y la narración logró atraparme hasta el final de la misma. Andrea Levy tiene una pluma sencilla, directa y sobria, no extendiéndose en demasía en los sucesos, en las descripciones o en los detalles. Pero funciona por la inteligencia con la que maneja todos los elementos a su disposición, y por su enorme capacidad evocadora, tanto para las descripciones paisajísticas, como para introducirse ya no solo en su narradora y protagonista, también en la mente y alma de los personajes que lo que la acompañan a lo largo de las más de trescientas páginas de las que consta el libro.skill is an ability to find meaning in the most scribbled of texts. Give me writing that looks to have been made by some insect crawling dirty legs across the paper and I will print its sense, clear and precise. Show me blots and smudges of ink and I will see form. Let blades of grass blow together in the breeze and I will find words written in their flowing strands. Most disturbing of all, is that a major subplot was started and never again. Had this "event" happened to a real person, I can't imagine that they wouldn't give it further thought or mention. To end the story without even this significant subplot even a nod was grossly dissatisfying. 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? Violence and brutality run through the novel and Levy opens with a serious sexual assault, from which the novel’s narrator, July, is born. Discuss how gender plays a role in the novel and its wider historical events. Do you think women were more vulnerable than men? 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.

Reading guide: The Long Song by Andrea Levy - Booker Prize

Caroline is a white mistress at Amity and the plantation owner’s sister. She is responsible for taking July from the cotton fields (‘Look how cute the little one is’, she says before callously removing her from her mother). Caroline teaches July to read and write so she can help her run the business. She is deeply flawed and becomes unknowingly dependent on July. The Long Song is written as a memoir by an elderly Jamaican woman living in early 19th-century Jamaica during the final years of slavery and the transition to freedom that took place thereafter. It tells the tale of a young slave girl, July, who lives at Amity – a sugarcane plantation. She lived through the 1831 Baptist War, and then the beginning of freedom. Her mother, Kitty; the slaves working the plantation land; and the owner of the plantation, the white woman Caroline Mortimer, are other characters in the novel. [1] Themes [ edit ] This is a terrific book: beautifully written and imagined, and full of surprises… A brilliant historical novel.” 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. July emerges as a defiant, charismatic, almost invincible woman who gives a unique voice to the voiceless, and for that she commands affection and admiration. 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.’ I liked the mother-daughter story about two women who grow up as slaves, and the cruel things they had to endure. In fact the first scene with Kitty, is what really drew me to the book. Later, Kitty's daughter, July (the main character) is introduced, along with Caroline (her mistress). The use of dialect added just enough spice to the book. Part of the book also captures the Emancipation Proclamation--a nicely added twist.

The Long Song” is a story about a woman named July, who writes a memoir about her life in Jamaica during its 19th century slave era. She is taken from her mother Kitty at the age of 9 by the request of the plantation owner’s sister Caroline Mortimer. July’s position at the main house on Amity Plantation as Caroline’s personal maid was full of hard work; her lessons learned during the early years were just as difficult, despite her escaping the laborious work and abuse associated with the sugar cane fields. 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.’ 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." Jones, Tayari. "Book review: 'The Long Song,' by Andrea Levy". Washington Post . Retrieved 12 March 2015.