But how far the rest of the book is an accurate portrayal of her words is impossible to tell. The two discuss this at length during a few interludes, and some aspects of the book is clearly told in the way July wishes them to be. He wouldn’t change the facts per say, though he may present them in a way that he finds most appropriate. Although, we presume, he sticks relatively close to her narrative, it is filtered through him.

So everything she says comes through him on the page. He then, in turn, is writing the book we have before us. The story begins with an aged mother (July) narrating her story to her son. Indeed, it’s about what isn’t said that is the most powerful and intensely thought provoking aspect of the book. The Long Song is a deeply moving story, but it’s not what is said that is most effective. Come, let them just read it for themselves. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July's mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides - far too many for me to list here.

She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was present when slavery was declared no more. July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages.

The long song by andrea levy