Last night Andrea Levy did the first
public reading of her new novel, The Long Song. The event was part of the
on-going Richard Hoggart Lectures in Literature.
Eagerly awaited after the triumph of Small Island, The Long Song was a book that initially, Levy says, she was reluctant to write.
After finishing Small Island, having explored the lives of those, like
her father, who arrived in England on the Windrush, she found herself
wondering, "What were my parents doing in the Caribbean in the first place?"
This line of inquiry, lead inevitably, to slavery. Could
she face the research?
What set The Long Song going was trying to imagine beyond the
horrors of slavery, trying to imagine the "chatter and clatter of people
building their lives, families and communities..." Levy wanted to tell a
story that would engage the reader.
Last night, with three short extracts, and a bold, embodied reading Levy certainly engaged the Goldsmiths audience. Narrator July, has a voice and story that makes you sit up and listen.
Levy's gift is not simply finding the story to tell but finding the angle and particular voice to carry the story. I can still hear July's voice calling me back to come and listen to the rest of her life.
With Levy's unique mix of a searching intelligence, wit, warmth, and patient crafting she has slid between the pages of official records and imagined the story that history didn't tell. July's is a story that needed to be told. The way Levy tells it the world can't help but listen.
She was candid about her writing habits - working in
short sections; the first draft done in long hand in the local library. This
gets put on the computer then worked up. She writes in the afternoon having
dealt with the rest of life in the morning. "I don't trust myself to write
more than two hours a day."
Levy's account of how she came to write The Long Song is a
story in itself
- Click here to read, The Writing of The Long Song by Andrea
Levy, and also to hear her read an extract from the book.
No Goldsmiths next week, it's Reading Week. I know what
I'll be reading...
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