35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Horrors of Slavery, April 20, 2010
This review is from: The Long Song: A Novel (Hardcover)
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The horrors of chattel slavery are described in stark relief in Levy's fictional life story of a nineteenth-century Jamaican woman. Miss July, born into slavery, lives through some of Jamaica's most tumultuous events: warfare, emancipation, and the difficult transition to free labor. Miss July has endured more tragedy than most modern readers can comprehend: pulled away from her mother as a child, only to see her mother executed in the wake of a slave rebellion, Miss July's own child is given away. Ultimately Miss July finds herself in love with a dangerous white man. This book brings the horrors and brutality of slavery into full relief. It also shows how slave ownership corrupts slave owners, as we see two Britons become slave masters. This book is an accomplished family epic. It is a novel deep with emotion, and one that recreates a thoroughly believable nineteenth-century Jamaica. This is a world of tremendous violence and exploitation, yet one in which we still see tremendous human tenderness.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Well Written But Treads Little New Ground, August 22, 2010
This review is from: The Long Song: A Novel (Hardcover)
Writing a book set on a plantation with the dominant backdrop of slavery is a difficult thing to do. The reason is because this backdrop has been used many times by some brilliant novelists. Levy's challenge was to make something unique. Did she succeed? I think she did to some degree though Long Song certainly suffers by comparison to other novels of its ilk.
Most novels of slavery are set in the American South but this one is set in Jamaica. That's a distinguishing factor but not one that really makes much of a difference. She writes a strong lead character in July who is a "mulatto" who draws the positive attention of the mistress of the plantation. July is basically a good person but certainly, as you would expect, has no love for the white captors nor does she show appreciation that she is "relatviely" well treated. The first half of the book tells of July and how she came to draw the attention of the mistress of the plantation.
In the second half of the book, July has a love affair with the new Plantation Master who tries to be a good, open minded man but ultimately deteriorates into a man who expects the gratitude of the slaves. July loves him and he loves her and they work out an arrangement that satisfies for awhile but predictably ends terribly. The second half of the book focuses on the relationships and the unravelling of their lives on the island. It is much stronger than the first half of the book.
This is a very competently written, well researched story that is a relatively quick read. I recommend it but can't help but compare it to "The Confessions Of Nat Turner", "Beloved", "The Book of Negroes" etc. It doesn't really stand up in comparison to those superior works.
It is on the 2010 Man Booker Prize Long List and I expect it will also make the Short List and has an outside shot at claiming the prize.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"There are [other] books to satisfy if words flowing free as the droppings falling from the backside of a mule is your desire.", May 4, 2010
This review is from: The Long Song: A Novel (Hardcover)
The feisty Jamaican speaker of this novel is writing her life story for her son Thomas, who grew up away from "home" and became educated and trained as a printer in England. July wants him to understand the story of her life-her slavery in Jamaica-and in this way know her and their heritage better. What follows is a family history tied to Amity Plantation, where July, the mulatto daughter of a slave and a Scottish overseer, has lived with her mother. In the 1820s, July, still a child, attracts the interest of Caroline Mortimer, the sister of the owner of Amity, and she decides to train July as her maid. July grows and eventually learns to manipulate the self-centered Caroline, but Caroline becomes even more autocratic, resembling the plantation owners.
It is not until Christmas, 1831, that Jamaica's Great Slave Rebellion takes place, affecting even Amity, and changing the face of the entire country. Some fields and plantations are burned. Whites, especially preachers who have opposed slavery, are tarred and feathered by other whites. With his own loyalties in question, John Howarth unexpectedly cedes control of the plantation to the tempestuous Caroline. Slavery officially ends on July 31, 1838, and July's narrative becomes less the story of slavery in general and more the personal story of July as an adult--free, but dependent--as she uses her beauty and talents for her own ends. The workers no longer accept the plantation's demands, and full-scale rebellion by the freemen is inevitable.
Andrea Levy is a masterful writer, with a sense of drama, the ability to use it to create a lively narrative, and a fine eye for detail. Her subject of slavery, by its very nature, achieves power with very little embellishment, her characters elicit both sympathy and fury, and the novel moves quickly. Though many readers will find it a non-stop read, others may become impatient with the fact that, despite its unusual setting, it highlights injustices and atrocities similar to those in many other historical novels about slavery and plantation life. July, as the main character, is lively and intriguing, but she is not always able to keep the narrative feeling fresh and "new."
There are also problems with point of view. When Caroline first arrives, the narrator tells us what Caroline is seeing, feeling, and thinking, though July could not know that. When July's son Thomas makes suggestions regarding the finished narrative and suggests that July fill in missing information, she is sometimes frivolous and invents "facts." At other times, Levy herself fills in the blanks, in one case having Thomas's own (necessary) history included as the "excerpt" from a story "written" by his adoptive mother and published in a Baptist pamphlet in England, a device that feels like a device. The novel is well-researched, with dialogue which conveys all the emotions one would expect of conflicted characters, and ultimately, THE LONG SONG offers a view of Jamaican history which Levy's fans will celebrate. Mary Whipple
Small Island: A Novel
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