The Long Song

Andrea Levy’s final novel, The Long Song (2010), is a work of historical fiction and a neo-slave narrative that tells the story of the final, turbulent years of slavery in 19th-century Jamaica. The novel is framed as the memoir of a formerly enslaved woman named July, whose manuscript is being edited by her estranged, educated son, Thomas Kinsman. July’s defiant, darkly comedic, and unreliable voice charts her life from her birth on the Amity sugar plantation through her traumatic separation from her mother; her complex relationship with her self-absorbed “mistress,” Caroline; and the violent upheavals of the Baptist War of 1831. The novel explores the themes of The Myth of the Benevolent Enslaver, The Suffering That Sustained Colonial Wealth and Power, and Motherhood Under the Strain of Enslavement. 

Levy’s previous novel Small Island (2004) won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and The Long Song was met with widespread critical praise on its release. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and won the 2011 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The novel subverts the conventions of the slave narrative by using humor and a disruptive narrator to reclaim a history largely documented by white enslavers. July’s insistence on telling her story her own way, often rejecting her son’s editorial suggestions and the reader’s expectations, becomes an act of resistance against the historical erasure of enslaved voices. In 2018, the novel was adapted into a three-part BBC One television series, which later aired in the United States on PBS’s Masterpiece.

This guide refers to the 2010 Farrar, Straus and Giroux first American edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death, child death, death by suicide, graphic violence, sexual violence, rape, physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, racism, mental illness, substance use, sexual content, and cursing.

Language Note: The source material and guide contain extensive discussion of enslavement and anti-Black racism. The source text uses the outdated and offensive slurs “negro,” “mulatto,” “quadroon,” “slave,” and the n-word to refer to Black people, reflecting the ingrained racism of the novel’s historical period and setting. These are reproduced in this guide only in direct quotations, and the n-word has been obscured.

Plot Summary

In 1898 Jamaica, the successful Black printer Thomas Kinsman presents the memoir of his mother, a woman named July who was born into slavery. Thomas has edited her “crabbed script” to make her story flow, though he notes that she insisted on telling it her own way. 

July’s tale begins at the Amity sugar plantation in the early 19th century, where her formidable “field-slave” mother, Kitty, gives birth to her. July’s father is the brutal Scottish overseer, Tam Dewar. The narrative soon jumps forward to July’s ninth year, when Caroline Mortimer, the sister of the plantation owner, John Howarth, arrives from England. A recent widow, Caroline is naive, self-absorbed, and overwhelmed by life in Jamaica. During a ride around the estate, she is instantly charmed by July, whom she sees picking flowers. Ignoring Kitty’s anguish, Caroline claims the “adorable” child for her own, taking her to the “great house” to be trained as her lady’s maid and renaming her Marguerite. Kitty is left devastated, forced to watch her daughter’s new life from a distance. She peers through the windows of the great house at night.

July’s life as a “house slave” is a constant negotiation of power and survival. She resents her captivity and her new name, initially resisting Caroline’s authority, but she gradually learns to manipulate her self-centered and often foolish “mistress.” A co-dependent, adversarial relationship develops between them, with July becoming indispensable to Caroline. July finds a new, complicated family among the other enslaved workers in the house, including the wily headman Godfrey, the resentful maid Molly, and the cook Hannah. To avoid punishment, July perfects the art of feigned hysterics and subservience. Presenting a dress ruined by careless laundering, she throws herself on the floor and begs to be beaten, disarming Caroline’s anger. 

Years pass in this manner, with John Howarth becoming a reclusive figure, consumed by grief over the death of his wife, Agnes, in childbirth. By 1831, the routine of Amity is shattered. During a Christmas dinner party that Caroline hosts, news arrives of the Baptist War, a massive revolt of enslaved people erupting in the west of the island. The white men at the dinner, including Howarth and Tam Dewar, immediately leave to join the militia. 

Left alone with only the “house slaves” to protect her, Caroline is terrified. A freeman and former groom at Amity, Nimrod Freeman, arrives with lurid tales of the rebellion, further unsettling the great house. Meanwhile, the militia’s suppression of the revolt is brutal. Howarth witnesses atrocities committed against enslaved people but is particularly shocked to witness fellow plantation owners, disguised as women, tar and feather a white Baptist missionary. Traumatized, Howarth returns to Amity. His return wakes July and Nimrod, who took advantage of their enslaver’s absence the previous night, drinking his wine and having sex in his bed. While hiding under his bed, they witness Howarth shoot himself with a pistol. 

Caroline and Dewar discover John’s body and spot Nimrod under the bed, while July remains unseen. To avoid the scandal and financial ruin of a suicide, Dewar coaches Caroline to claim that Nimrod murdered Howarth and that she, in a heroic act, shot the culprit as he tried to escape. As Dewar prepares to execute Nimrod, July bursts from her hiding place and tackles the overseer, causing his pistol to fire harmlessly. She locks Dewar and Caroline in the room and drags the injured Nimrod toward the enslaved people’s village. The militia descends upon the village, burning huts and terrorizing the inhabitants. 

Dewar pursues July and Nimrod to the mill yard, where he shoots Nimrod dead. Just as he turns his pistol on July, Kitty appears out of the chaos. In a desperate act to save her daughter, Kitty viciously attacks Dewar, beating him so badly that he later dies. July flees on Kitty’s command. Kitty is captured, tried, and publicly hanged for her crime, an execution that July witnesses from hiding. 

Nine months later, July gives birth to a son, Thomas, whose skin is as dark as Nimrod’s. She leaves him outside the home of a white Baptist minister, James Kinsman. July initially omits this event from her narrative, but Thomas angrily insists that she must tell the truth. Thomas was raised by the Kinsmans, who viewed him as a Christian project.

In the years that follow, slavery is formally abolished and replaced by a transitional “apprenticeship” system that, in anticipation of their freedom, forces former enslaved people to continue working unpaid for 45 hours a week. July remains with Caroline, who now runs the failing plantation. A new overseer, Robert Goodwin, arrives from England. He is an idealistic, handsome young man who believes in treating formerly enslaved people with Christian kindness, a stark contrast to his brutal predecessors. Caroline is immediately infatuated with him, but Robert is tormented by an overwhelming attraction to July.

Torn between his passion and the principles instilled by his clergyman father, Robert engages in a series of tense, secret encounters with July. He’s terrified of cockroaches, and after July kills a large one for him, he gives her a cracked blue-and-white plate as a gift. Throughout their interactions, July emphasizes that her father was a white man from Scotland, believing that this will make her a more suitable partner in Robert’s eyes. When she falsely claims that Tom Dewar was a loving father, Robert shows her illustrations from a book about Scotland. Robert devises a plan to resolve his moral conflict: He proposes to Caroline, intending to use the marriage as a respectable cover for his affair with July. Immediately after the wedding, Robert consummates his relationship with July in her small room beneath the great house. Their passionate affair continues, and the household dynamic shifts entirely. This change is captured in a formal oil portrait of the couple, in which the artist unwittingly paints Robert gazing lovingly at July instead of at his wife. July soon becomes pregnant and gives birth to a fair-skinned, gray-eyed daughter named Emily, whom Robert adores.

Meanwhile, Robert’s idealistic attempts to manage the plantation end in disaster. The formerly enslaved people refuse to work under the exploitative terms he offers, and he retaliates by imposing exorbitant rents on the provision grounds that they depend on for their survival. Rather than submit, the workers establish a new, free settlement on Amity’s backlands. 

With his workforce gone and the plantation collapsing into ruin, Robert has a mental-health crisis, attempting to harvest the cane himself and violently turning on July when she tries to intervene. Caroline nurses him back to a fragile state of health, and they decide to sell the estate and return permanently to England. Robert coldly forbids July from approaching him or saying goodbye. After watching the couple depart, July discovers that her rival, Molly, has disappeared with Emily. She learns that Molly is joining Caroline and Robert in England as a servant and has taken baby Emily with her.

July, the narrator, fabricates a happy ending. She claims that she became the wealthy owner of a pickle shop and later a boarding house. However, as the editor, Thomas again intervenes, insisting that she tell the truth. 

The narrative jumps forward more than 30 years. An aged, impoverished July is on trial for stealing a chicken. In the courtroom, she’s recognized by a prosperous Black man serving on the jury—her son, Thomas. He approaches her after her case is dismissed and takes her to live in his home in Kingston. July’s memoir ends here, with her refusing Thomas’s entreaty to write about the brutal years she spent on the backlands, insisting that her tale must have a happy ending. The book closes with an Afterword from Thomas, asking the reader for any information regarding the whereabouts of his lost half-sister, Emily Goodwin.