Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her “Marguerite.”
Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. Together they live through the bloody Baptist war, followed by the violent and chaotic end of slavery. Taught to read and write so that she can help her mistress run the business, July remains bound to the plantation despite her “freedom.” It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress. Prompted and provoked by her son’s persistent questioning, July’s resilience and heartbreak are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love.
About the Author
Andrea Levy was born in London, England in 1956 to Jamaican parents.
She is the author of five novels, each of which explore – from different perspectives – the problems faced by black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994), is the story of a Jamaican family living in London in the 1960s. Her second, Never Far from Nowhere (1996), is set during the 1970s and tells the story of two very different sisters living on a London council estate. In Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Faith Jackson, a young black Londoner, visits Jamaica after suffering a nervous breakdown and discovers a previously unknown personal history. Small Island (2004), set in 1948, explores the interaction between a black couple, Gilbert, a former RAF recruit, who has returned to Britain on the SS Windrush, and his Jamaican wife Hortense, and a white couple: Queenie, their landlady, and her recently demobbed husband, Bernard. It won the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction, the 2004 Whitbread Book of the Year, and the 2005 Commonwealth Writers Prize. Small Island was adapted for BBC television and broadcast in 2009.
Her latest novel is The Long Song (2010), set in early 19th-century Jamaica, telling the story of July, a house slave. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. In 2014 her collection Six Stories and an Essay was published by Tinder Press. It includes an essay where she talks about her Caribbean heritage and the motivation this has given her to write.
Andrea Levy has been a judge for the Saga Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. She lives in north London.
Other Books by the Author
Small Island
Every Light in the Burnin’ house
Never Far from Nowhere
Six Stories and an Essay
Underwords: The Hidden City
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