{"id":59494,"date":"2020-02-07T16:02:12","date_gmt":"2020-02-07T16:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=59494"},"modified":"2020-02-07T16:02:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-07T16:02:12","slug":"andrea-levy-my-brilliant-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=59494","title":{"rendered":"Andrea Levy, my brilliant friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Andrea Levy, my brilliant friend<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The New Statesman<\/a>
\n2020-02-05<\/p>\n

Gary Younge<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Remembering the novelist, one year after her death.<\/em><\/p>\n

While Bill Mayblin, the novelist Andrea Levy\u2019s<\/a> widower, was gathering her things for the British Library archive, he came across a red Moleskine<\/a> book containing a handwritten tale that he\u2019d never seen before.<\/p>\n

Entitled \u201cTwo\u201d, it is a brief dialogue between two unnamed functionaries working for the Grim Reaper<\/a> . They are discussing Andrea\u2019s impending death. With a mixture of wry cynicism, callous ambivalence and bureaucratic nonchalance they ponder her admittance, as though standing at a water cooler in a celestial call centre.<\/p>\n

I have someone for you.
\nGood. Male or female?
\nFemale.
\nChildbirth?
\nDon\u2019t be silly, we haven\u2019t done childbirth in ages. It\u2019s a bit rare you know.
\nAround here maybe but not in other parts.
\nWell, maybe so. But childbirth\u2026 no. Cancer.
\nBreast?
\nOf course.
\nI\u2019m not going to have to hang about for ages am I? Only the last one took years.
\nIt\u2019s on. It\u2019s off. Tries my patience.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a close friend of Andrea\u2019s, who talked with her a lot about the cancer she had and the death that was coming, I found the voices were recognisably hers. She lived with cancer for a decade \u2013 long enough for her to joke that she stopped telling people about it because some looked almost disappointed when they bumped into her and found her looking fine…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remembering the novelist, one year after her death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1245,1196,8,10],"tags":[29450,30732,3155,25403,30729],"class_list":["post-59494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-biography","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-uk","tag-andrea-levy","tag-bill-mayblin","tag-gary-younge","tag-new-statesman","tag-the-new-statesman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59494"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59495,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59494\/revisions\/59495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}