Novel
The Ventriloquist's Tale
Pauline Melville · 1997
Synopsis
Chofy McKinnon, a rancher of the Guyanese savannah, descended from a Scot settled among the Wapisiana, goes to Georgetown, where he falls in love with Rosa Mendelson, an English academic who has come to study Evelyn Waugh's stay in British Guiana. Through the memories of his aunt Wifreda, the novel goes back to the beginning of the century and to the forbidden love of a brother and a sister, Danny and Beatrice, under the eye of a Catholic missionary, Father Napier. A trickster narrator, the ventriloquist, leads the narrative.
Context
Published in London by Bloomsbury in 1997, this first novel received the Whitbread First Novel Award and the following year was among the finalists for the Orange Prize. It takes up the journey Evelyn Waugh made in British Guiana in 1932 and 1933, told in Ninety-Two Days, and makes the writer a character; Father Napier is inspired by a real Jesuit. Translated into French by Christian Surber under the title Parole de ventriloque, by Éditions Zoé in 2002, it reappeared in paperback from Points in 2008.
Who it is for
For discovering the Amerindian savannahs of Guyana and their legends in a prize-winning novel, readable in French.
Prizes and reception
Publishers Weekly hails a brilliant, witty and complex novel, while Caribbean Beat is more reserved.
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