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Loading... The Long Song (edition 2011)by Andrea Levy (Author)
Work InformationThe Long Song by Andrea Levy
  
  BooksInMirror | Feb 19, 2024 |   ) books-n-pickles | Jan 16, 2022 |  ) KateBaxter | Jul 5, 2021 | Another historical novel by Andrea Levy following on from Small Island, this time looking at colonial Jamaica at the time of rebellion and the abolition of slavery. I confess my more or less complete ignorance of Caribbean history, and while I have read a fair amount about the implementation and abolition of slavery in the United States, I don't think I've read anything about the history of the British colonies. In the wake of a bloody rebellion in 1831, the British smugly abolished slavery in the Empire with effect from 1834; but those facts and dates don't give any expression to the brutality of the institution or to the desperate society that emerged from the reform. Levy's story concentrates on women, her central character adopted by her master's sister as a pet and thus well-placed to observe the damage the system did to the white owners as well as the slaves. It's largely told in semi-patois but very readable. Like Small Island, it didn't blow me away, but I felt I learned a lot from it. ( ) nwhyte | Jun 9, 2020 | 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. (  ) MaggieFlo | Sep 19, 2019 |
 Daarvoor is ’Het lange lied’ een te menselijk verhaal, over vrouwen en kinderen die weten te overleven in tegenspoed, die leven en liefhebben, die geboren worden en sterven onder de heldere zon, omringd door de weelde van de tropen. Thomas, zoon van de verteller en trots op (maar niet verblind door) zijn Engelse opvoeding, drukt het zo uit: „De enige troost voor het geleden onrecht is de volledige waarheid”. Dat wil zeggen: een onsentimenteel portret van een gebroken samenleving, waarin de fouten van degenen die eerst tot slavernij en daarna tot armoede veroordeeld waren net zo eerlijk en met net zoveel sympathie worden beschreven als die van hun onderdrukkers. De slavenbezitters zijn vooral gênant als persoonlijkheid, niet als vertegenwoordigers van een bepaald volk of natie. As is inevitable in any book about slavery, this novel is confronting. And at times it is almost unbearable to witness the attitudes of the plantation owners.  In The Long Song, Andrea Levy explores her Jamaican heritage more completely than ever before. This sensational novel – her first since the Orange Prize-winning Small Island...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. Andrea Levy's insightful and inspired fifth novel, "The Long Song," reminds us that she is one of the best historical novelists of her generation....Levy's previous novel, "Small Island," is rightly regarded as a masterpiece, and with "The Long Song" she has returned to the level of storytelling that earned her the Orange Prize in 2004. Her heroine narrates the beginning of the end of slavery in Jamaica, coming to a climax with the 1831 Baptist War, when enslaved men and women fought their enslavers for 10 days. It's clear that Levy has done her research, but this work never intrudes upon the narrative, which travels at a jaunty pace. Levy's sly humor swims just under the surface of the most treacherous waters 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.....The heart of the novel is July's description of the ménage à trois between Caroline, herself and Caroline's newly acquired English abolitionist husband, Robert. You despise, pity and almost – but never quite – sympathise with Caroline. On first arriving in Jamaica, she appears a twit – yet with a lively curiosity AwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until a recently transplanted English widow decides to move her into the great house and rename her. She remains bound to the plantation despite her "freedom." The arrival of a young English overseer dramatically changes life in the great house. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.64)
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The Long Song by Andrea Levy
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