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

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Writing came to Levy's rescue. Her first three books - 'Every Light In The House Burnin'' (1994), 'Never Far from Nowhere' (1996) and 'Fruit of the Lemon' (1999) - explored questions of immigrant identity and were semi-autobiographical. Through her writing, she explored the historical connection between Britain and the Caribbean as a profoundly British concern, and her literary project was to make people of both small islands aware of their intertwined history. 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 ] While The Long Song depicts a dark period of history, the author’s use of language and tone is often distinctly humorous, which can, at times, feel disconcerting given the subject matter is so harrowing. How does this use of levity help readers navigate material relating to this period?

The Guardian: ‘I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can take on the world’This is July’s story; we see her from birth to old age, and she is the narrator of her own past. Passionate, wilful, and determined, she is also richly humorous, and a wily survivor. Separated from her mother as an infant, she learns first how to handle, and then how to manipulate, her mistress Caroline. But she does permit herself to describe the symbolic funeral that marked the end of slavery on 31 July 1838, only then to admit that she was not actually present. She was still cooped up with her white mistress, Caroline Mortimer, owner of the sugar plantation. Fellow house slave to July at Amity, and patronised by July. She has her vengeance in episode three. John Howarth, played by Leo Bill

The Man Booker prize 2010 shortlist". The Guardian. 7 September 2010. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 July 2020. The Long Song has an unusual format for a historical novel. Part memoir, part oral history, it is led by July, the narrator, who is detailing an account of her life on a Jamaican plantation, which is then filtered through her son, who is writing her account and experiences on her behalf. It is often non-linear and, at points, Levy deviates with interludes and interruptions, where the two discuss the presentation of the story. What did you think of this format - how did it serve your reading experience and your understanding of July’s experience? Why do you think Levy chose to write in this manner? Beautiful and ambitious, she finds herself blindsided by love for the overseer Robert. She has an indomitable spirit of survival. We meet her at different stages: in childhood - as a baby, toddler, and seven year-old; as a young woman from 18 to 25 years old, and lastly as an older woman in her 60s. Pictured:Kitty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) and July (Tamara Lawrance) Tam Dewar, played by Gordon Brown The framing is Jamaican printer-publisher Thomas Kinsman’s attempt to persuade centenarian Miss July to tell her story for his book of slave narratives. Her participation is complicated by a reluctance to accept the term “slavery” and caginess about her personal and working lives, the script alert to present questions of who has the right to relate experience and to what purpose such stories are told.A field slave at Amity plantation and mother of July. She’s a strong, stoic slave of few words, who suffers deeply when her child July is stolen from her. She endures heroically, and is capable of unbending love, loyalty and self-sacrifice. White, Peter. "Hayley Atwell & Tamara Lawrance To Star In David Heyman’s BBC Drama The Long Song". Deadline Hollywood. 12 July 2018.