Review 34: The Long Song by Andrea Levy

I’ve read a few books dealing with black slavery as part of this challenge. It’s interesting how each one looks at it through a slightly different lens, adding slightly different perspectives to the whole picture.

In The Long Song, the thing that rings as much through the book as the horror and inhumanity of slavery is the sense of humour between the slaves themselves. It felt odd to laugh out loud while reading this, but there are plenty of times I did. I guess that this in itself is important – humour is an essential and universal human trait, so if we deny the slaves’ humour in recounting their stories, maybe it’s another way of denying their humanity all over again. I tried rewriting this about five times to make me sound less like a pseudo-intellectual jerksack, but this is the best I could do, I’m afraid.

Anyway, TLS is set in a Jamaican sugar plantation in the early 19th century, and spans the periods just before and after slavery was abolished in the British Empire, following the life and trials of July, a young slave (and then freewoman).

One of the key points of the book seems to revolve around the telling of stories. As I’ve mentioned in other reviews, the oral tradition of storytelling was staple in black culture. Levy really neatly contrasts this between the slaves, who embellish their stories to make them more enjoyable and unbelievable to hear told and retold, and their white masters, who twist the truth into forms they find more palatable and believable in line with their worldview. The overall message is one that the truth can never truly be found when it’s constantly under human reinterpretation – and that we should challenge our preconceptions of what this period was like.

Since the book’s being narrated by July herself, it’s also interesting to see white people through her eyes. Much as white people write two-dimensional black character through a lack of cultural understanding, so July struggle to understand white behaviour in-depth. And how could she not, when the minor annoyances of the white masters are set against the deep miseries endured by slaves?

So there’s a lot of depth to the writing – but nonetheless, it feels light, easy and pleasant to read. That in itself is quite an achievement, and there are plenty more here besides. I really enjoyed it.

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