The Ventriloquist's Tale [Paperback]

Pauline Melville (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 19, 1999

Pauline Melville conjures up vivid pictures both of savanna and forest and of city life in South America where love is often trumped by disaster. Unforgettable characters illuminate theme and plot: Sonny, the strange, beautiful and isolate son of Beatrice and Danny, the brother and sister who have a passionate affair at the time of the solar eclipse in 1919; Father Napier, the sandy-haired evangelist whom the Indians perceive as a giant grasshopper; Chofy McKinnon the modern Indian, torn between savanna life and urban future. This is a novel that embraces nearly a century, large in scope but intimate as a whisper, where laughter is never far from the scene of tragedy; a parable of miscegenation and racial elusiveness, of nature defying culture, magic confronting rationalism and of the eternally rebellious nature of love.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Where I come from, disguise is the only truth and desire the only true measure of time," the riddling, feisty narrator of The Ventriloquist's Tale asserts. Pauline Melville explores the effects of both of these in her dark--and often deeply funny--narrative of forbidden love and the clash of cultures. Set in the Guyanese capitol of Georgetown and on its distant savannahs, Melville's first novel turns on the tragic absurdities of colonialism, capitalism, and fanaticism, not to mention a pair of very illicit relationships. In the 1920s, two mixed-race siblings find it surprisingly easy to be together and unsuspected:

Just like the brown and black patterns in the artwork on the woven baskets and sifters and matapees, where it is not always possible to tell foreground from background and the animal symbols are disguised by being embedded in a geometrical whole, Beatrice and Danny were miraculously concealed by their home setting.

In the present-day strand, Chofy McKinnon, Danny's nephew, has an intense and tragic affair with Rosa Mendelson, an English academic looking into Evelyn Waugh's journey to Guyana in the 1930s. Waugh, possessed of "a pushed-up face and little pebble eyes," had stayed with the McKinnons, and forced Danny in particular to listen to hour after hour of Dombey and Son--a brilliant spin on Waugh's reportage from the Amazonias, not to mention his novel A Handful of Dust. Melville offers up an acute vision on Guyana's colonial past and present, and on the pull between nature and culture, superstition versus rationalism, blindness and sight. She knows that there is no easy middle ground, perhaps no middle ground at all. "You say we have to mix," Chofy's cousin cries. "What to do? We're destroyed if we mix. And we're destroyed if we don't." Readers will be hard-pressed to descry any moral in the astonishing Ventriloquist's Tale (though order and institutions aren't held in high esteem). As for forbidden love--it definitely doesn't conquer all, but its memory is bliss in Beatrice's later, respectable years: "She barely had time to remember that other love which had flowed always under the grind of daily life; a sweet underground river that sometimes broke through to the surface and made its own music, but mainly stayed hidden, so that she only carried the echoes of its song." --Kerry Fried --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

In Melville's ambitious and richly realized debut set in modern-day Guyana, religious, social and philosophical tensions beset all the characters. Two illicit love affairs are the vertebrae of an absorbing story set against the background of colonial life in exotic surroundings. One doomed romance is the adulterous liaison between Chofy McKinnon, a half-Scot, half-Indian, cattle rancher, and Rosa Mendelson, a British scholar researching Evelyn Waugh's visit to the country in the 1930s. Chofy meets Rosa on a trip to Guyana's capital, Georgetown, to see his aunt Wifreda, a hospitalized old woman on the verge of going blind. As Wifreda reminisces about her childhood, the narrative plunges into the story of the previous generation, telling of an incestuous affair between Chofy's uncle Danny and Beatrice, Danny's sister. Wifreda deliberately betrays Beatrice, who, humiliated, exiles herself to Canada. Beatrice also blames the British missionary Father Napier, an authoritarian clergyman who clashes with Danny's father and tries to counter the superstitious characters' belief in witchcraft (Beatrice curses Wifreda, who believes that is the reason she is losing her eyesight years later) with church doctrine. By the time Melville returns to the parallel tale of forbidden love between Chofy and Rosa, she's not just unfolding two compelling love stories but is also continuing to explore the discord between the foreign and the indigenous, the fear of the primitive colliding with the arrogance of the enlightened. Melville's nuanced characterizations, fluid prose, apt imagery and beautifully understated dialogue augment her skill as a raconteur. An unsentimental but moving narrative about the pain of longing, the book is mystical yet fiercely rationalist, ideological while coolly above politics and, despite a somewhat contrived ending, brilliant, witty and complicated. (Sept.) FYI: The Ventriloquist's Tale won the 1997 Whitbread First Novel Award.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (June 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582340269
• ISBN-13: 978-1582340265
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,664,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Evelyn Waugh, solar eclipses and forbidden love, December 3, 2005

By 

Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Ventriloquist's Tale (Hardcover)

Pauline Melville’s first novel is set in Guyana, the only English speaking country in South America, famous for its rum, gold, lush rainforest and rich folklore. From the garden city of Georgetown to the endless savannahs of the Rupununi, her colorful tale weaves its way from past to present, mixing illicit relationships of various sorts with religion, politics and Kanaima, the black magic of vengeance.

While some of the stories of incest, adultery, and the sinful urges of a Catholic priest may make some readers squirm, Melville’s storytelling weaves a magical web drawing it all together, and although some of the narrative is in Creolese (the Guyanese vernacular) it should be quite easy for non-Guyanese to follow along.

The central theme links the forbidden love between a brother and sister to ancient legends of the origin of solar eclipses, and most of the story takes place in the south of Guyana among the Amerindian villages there. The parts of the story set in modern Georgetown are not half as colorful, their purpose being to link past and present, add a bit of humor, and also provide a little more shock value.

Tying it all together is an academic researcher who comes to Guyana to trace the path of celebrated novelist Evelyn Waugh, but finds much more than she bargained for.

This is a provocative story, based on actual legends, set in a real geographical location, and for the most part the author is spot-on in her portrayal of the characters depicted.


Amanda Richards, December 4, 2005


Note: The little drawings found at the beginning of every chapter represent ancient Amerindian rock carvings, and are mostly stylized forms of animals. These drawings are widely used as inspiration for jewellery and craft designs.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Morality Tale, September 11, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ventriloquist's Tale (Paperback)

In The Ventriloquist's Tale, Pauline Melville reconstructs the vibrant, explosive world of interior Guiana during early 20th Century - a world lost in a struggle between the stability of its past and the promise of the future. The Ventriloquist's Tale is an illustration of a world ravaged by European and American colonialism, marked by this confrontation of native and western cultures. Melville lures the reader into the minds of characters who find themselves caught between what they desire to be and the limitations imposed upon them by civilized society.
Melville offers an insightful testament to this cultural confrontation between the Amerindians and their European colonists. The European ideals of progress and innovation, embodied by Scotsman Alexander McKinnon, contrast sharply with the Amerindian worldview. The Amerindians believe that change is an unnecessary phenomenon: "...they laughed at the idea of progress, despised novelty and treated it with suspicion. Novelty, in fact, was dangerous. I meant that something was wrong with the order of things." (99)
European culture infiltrates Guiana through the mission of the Catholic Church, spearheaded by Father Napier, and Melville illustrates its detrimental effects on the Amerindian's ancient culture. Father Napier irrationally believes he will be able to convert the Amerindians, to persuade them to abandon their intricate mythology and their exotic way of life. The Amerindians are inseparable from their mystic stories about the sun, the moon, and the tree of life. Koko Lupi, the Amerindian healer, accuses Father Napier of force-feeding the Amerindians a "dead god on a stick" who will deprive the Amerindians of their passion for life and for the unknown (240). In fact, the European culture's stubborn willingness to repress their desires, to act against their passions, is exemplified by Father Napier's unconsummated sexual obsession with young Amerindian boys.
Melville does not allow European and American colonialism to thrive without grave consequence. The sheer devastation inflicted upon Guiana and its people by these intruders is epitomized by the death of eight-year old Bla-Bla. With exploitative zeal, Americans from Hawk Oil begin to "prospect" the Rupununi. Bla-Bla, the son of Chofy and Marietta, third generation McKinnons, accidentally sets off a dynamite explosion. Marietta's account of the scene is gut-wrenching: "And we found Bla-Bla by the river. Two fish still in the trap. Blood everywhere. The bones of his legs laid bare. Kaboura flies, sandflies and mosquitoes swarming all over him." (338)
The affair between Alexander McKinnon's two children, symbolized by an eclipse, seduces the reader, drawing him or her into Danny and Beatrice's forbidden world. Melville herself refrains from judging the two lovers and presents their incestuous affair as a fact, unclouded by moral bias. Her detachment from the moral issue challenges the reader to reexamine his or her attitudes towards and beliefs concerning incest. Throughout The Ventriloquist's Tale, disparate views towards incest appear. Incest is an embarrassing, taboo subject for the Europeanized Alexander McKinnon. Maba, the Amerindian mother of Danny and Beatrice reluctantly recognizes their affair: "I know it's not good, what Danny and Beatrice are doing, but it's not the worst thing in the world. It's happened before. It's just fate." (215) Father Napier abhors the incestuous act. He believes that Danny and Beatrice's actions should conform to his own religious and moral standards: "he thinks he can stand between the sun and the moon" (240).
Throughout The Ventriloquist's Tale Melville demonstrates the power that ideals of morality hold over us. Even human beings were once ruled by Nature, by their instincts, not socialized or indoctrinated by the institutions of civilized society. Time and time again Melville proves that Nature has no morality. Beatrice herself discloses that her affair with Danny "felt so natural that she could not believe that there was anything bad about it" (268). Melville's characters vacillate between trusting their instincts and upholding the moral absolutes of European culture. They struggle to cope with the atrocities they have experienced and the sacrifices they have made. Yet they remain, in the words of the ventriloquist, "unable to decide whether we should stick to ourselves or throw ourselves on the mercy of the wide world" (357).

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Storytelling, July 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Ventriloquist's Tale (Hardcover)

This novel consists of two main story lines, and a number of subplots. The author is an accomplished storyteller, and the stories are unusual in that they revolve around life in a part of the world (British Guiana) that we don't often hear about. The first story takes place in the Rupunnuni District of southern Br. Guiana, around 1920, and concerns an intimate love relationship between a brother and sister of Amerindian/Scottish descent. Apparently many people find this sort of thing revolting. However taken in the context of the Great War of 1914-18 which had just ended, it is difficult to get too excersised about it. This pair of lovers are not a particularly attractive couple. The brother is weak and ineffectual, and the sister is strong and pretty savage. You wouldn't want to tangle with her.
The other story takes place in the coastal town of Georgetown, probably in the 1960's, and involves an infidelity between another Amerindian/Scottish man, and an English woman who is involved in some really esoteric literary research. This is a really boring bussiness between two very selfindulgent people.
Besides all this, the author has several axes to grind. She doesn't like the Colonial British, she doesn't like the Roman Catholic Church, and she doesn't like the city folk of Geiorgetown. She is reallly high on the Amerindans and their way of life. However what she says about them is that they are very superstitious, and very arrogant, but they do understand how to live in an environment that is very close to nature.
There is a great deal of mumbo-jumbo in the book about incest and the moon and on and on. A lot of it is charming and unusual, and we all enjoy what is mysterious. But it is so much claptrap.
So I gave it three stars. for good storytelling, but I was put off by some of the attitudes expressed, which were too much part of the authors baggage.
And how does it all come out? Well as someone once said " ...the good ended good and the bad ended bad, that is what fiction is."