Five Stars for Andrea Levy

I was almost late to An Intimate Evening with Andrea Levy because I’d just chaperoned two authors to the Cats Social House for a bite and a bevy. Earlier, at the opening reception, both women had been given purple orchids to pin to their dresses to signify their author status. We’d decided I was the chaperone only because I was corsage-less and they felt a bit like we were coming from a prom. When we left the Cat House (I like the shorthand) we tore off to our different events. I arrived at the PTC Studio to a buzzing packed house.

The woman in the seat next to me in the theatre introduced herself as Linda. I chatted with the pretty, older woman about the festival and what each of us was seeing. She was clearly excited to be there and, even though she didn’t look like the type to play hooky, she confessed that she planned to skip work on Friday morning to attend an event. She was a good reminder why the word “Readers” is now included in the festival’s name.

Anne Giardini was the illustrious host for the event, sitting stage left of Ms. Levy. Besides being a novelist herself (Advice for Italian Boys), she is Chair of the Board of Directors for the VIWRF. She opened with the usual nod to sponsors, including India Carpets. “Every year I’m attempted to roll one up and take it home,” she joked.

 Giardini introduced Levy as a Londoner with Jamaican parents and with both Jewish and Scottish ancestry from this side and that. She then turned to Levy and said, “So you’re basically Canadian.” She continued by listing all of the many prizes Levy had been up for—including, most recently the Man Booker Prize for The Long Song. “Prizes that are a big deal,” Giardini said.

After the introduction, Levy took to the podium to read excerpts from The Long Song. She introduced the novel by saying that it came about from her interest in her Caribbean ancestry and relationship with Britain. “When did that intimacy with Britain begin?” she’d asked herself and “slavery” was the answer that came to her. “Oh no,” she’d thought, “I don’t want to write about slavery...because it would be about misery and violence.”

 Then, Levy found herself at a conference in London where the topic for discussion was the legacy of slavery. A young woman asked the panel how she could be proud of her Jamaican roots when her ancestors were slaves. Levy decided, at that moment, that she wanted to write a story to persuade the young woman to have pride in her slave ancestors. (To read Levy’s essay “The writing of The Long Song” visit www.andrealevy.co.uk).

 The first excerpt Levy read was from early on in the book when her protagonist, July, was a house slave on a sugar plantation where, as July put it, “sweetness comes at a dear price.” As soon as Levy began to read, her British accent gave way to the more musical tones of the Caribbean, which you could almost see the audience rock to. We got to know July’s wit and intelligence in that excerpt, as well as out author’s.

 “During the Booker shenanigans,” Levy told us at the end of the first excerpt, “much was made of, horror of horrors, some of the books on the list being funny.” This included Levy’s, which has “a serious narrator with a sense of humour.” Having just illustrated that with the first excerpt, she chose a more serious excerpt next—“a product of the imagination with actual historic events in it.” Here, I got lost in being read to and stopped making notes in my book until I surfaced again for the Q&A.

 Giardini asked the first couple of questions about research and tone. The research, not surprisingly, was tricky given the few narratives available from the Caribbean. Levy finally had to start looking into missionaries’ writings and was “able to see through the terrible narration” to get an idea of what things were like. In terms of tone, her challenge was “to be entertaining, funny and uplifting about human begins at their best and worst, and to talk about slavery, which can’t be done without it becoming terrible.”

 After that, the audience was free to ask questions. The first audience member wanted to know about writing and celebrity. Levy joked, “I’ve gone off canapés and you get tired of champagne.” She also said that she was happiest at home in her dressing gown mumbling to herself, which I suspect is the true hallmark of a writer.

 Building on the first question, the next audience member wanted to know if it was possible for a writer to be widely read and not be a celebrity. Levy talked about how writing has become about performing as well and related a story about being at a festival in Edinburgh and being horrified the next day to discover that she’d actually received a star rating in the paper.

 The Q&A continued. At one point, Levy was asked the classic one about day-to-day practice. She told us that she usually starts around 2:30pm, longhand at the local library, and finishes two to three hours later. “I don’t trust myself to work for more than two to three hours,” she said, though she carries her drafts around with her, and once she gets to serious editing, can work as long a day as need be.

 Levy also told us at some point that she didn’t start writing until her mid-30s when she took evening writing classes and really enjoyed it. She’d been working as a graphic and textile designer at the time. Her first book took “a very long time to get published” because there was “a sense that black people couldn’t carry a universal story.” Luckily, things changed and Headline Review in Britain accepted her first manuscript (Everything light in the house burnin’) and has published each of her books since.

“When did you start to take yourself seriously as a writer?” an audience member asked.

“Any day now,” Levy replied.

Near the end of the event, yet another audience member asked how Levy came up with “twists” for the end of her last two novels. Linda, sitting next to me, murmured “Don’t tell,” under her breath. It was as if she was acknowledging that Levy, as a writer, was also a magician or an alchemist and that her tricks were none of our business.

 Giardini wrapped things up by saying, “I need to call the local papers and get them to give you five stars now.” The applause in the studio signified cheeky, wholehearted agreement.