Carribean 'Gone With the Wind' delights

The struggles of colonial Jamaica are brought to vivid life in this 'mini-massa-piece'.

THE LONG SONG
Andrea Levy
Headline, $32.99, pbk

Review by Ian Williams 

ANDREA LEVY'S first novel Small Island was also a bestseller, which is why I decided to stick with The Long Song, a "Gone With the Wind meets Jamaica" saga, but with a somewhat complex narrative format not suited to conventional minds.

But if ever a novel grew on me this was it, encompassing as it does a period in history when black and white Jamaicans, the former indentured slaves, and their "massas", the sugar plantation owners, were sorting out their working and bonking relationships in the years prior to and following 1838, when the slaves were granted their freedom courtesy of the British Government.

With authentic use of the Jamaican patois of the era, readers seeking an intelligent, challenging narrative will surely find it in Ms Levy's mini-massa-piece.

Characters, both Negro and European, and the lives they lead are rendered so superbly, I almost forgot I was in Dunedin and not on the Amity plantation.

It felt as if I breathed the same hot air, alternately cringing at the poverty and cruelty, then laughing out loud at the absurdities, as Ms Levy (of Jamaican descent) invites readers to follow the fortunes and misfortunes of July, the slave girl (whose corpulent mistress, Caroline, renames her Henrietta) and new plantation overseer Robert, who marries Caroline but can't keep his hands off July.

With wheels turning and hearts churning in ways you'd never expect, by the time I'd reached the last page I wanted to play The Long Song all over again.

Ian Williams is a Dunedin writer and composer.