By Subraj Singh
A Guyanese author nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction? A Guyanese author who has won a Whitbread First Novel Award? Yes, such an author does exist in the form of the

enigmatic and extremely talented Guyanese writer, Pauline Melville. The book is one of my favourite pieces of literature from any Caribbean writer and it should be mandatory reading for anybody who claims to have an interest in the literature of Guyana.
The book focuses on a particular section of Guyanese society, an indigenous family, and therein lies something that makes it immediately special: the fact that it focuses on the indigenous peoples who, despite being the first ethnic group to occupy Guyana, have still, for the most part, not been represented well enough in local literature, on the rare occasions when they are represented at all. Melville, however, delves deep into Guyana’s heartland, reaches the savannahs of the Rupununi and soars over the spider web streets of Georgetown to give us a tale that is unique, sexy, wild and utterly enthralling, all set in a land that we know, among a people that we know, and yet, her eye for detail and her knowledge of what she is writing about ensures that her presentation of the story is done in such a way that even the Guyanese reader has to marvel at the wondrous “newness” of what is really an world in the book, and equally marvel at the representations of a people who are so close to us and yet, perhaps because of our own faults, are so far away.
The novel is narrated by Makunaima himself – the creator God- and his inclusion in the novel reveals the magical realist genre that Melville employs and weaves around what is mostly realism which, in a strange way, gives even more credence to the magical and fantastical even with the threat of it being subsumed by the realist portions of the novel. The story focuses on the McKinnons, particularly the siblings, Danny and Beatrice, who fall in love and embark on an illicit, incestuous affair, and on Chofy McKinnon who, years after Danny and Beatrice’s relationship, goes on his own journey of love and forgets his wife for a while as he begins a sexual relationship with a white academic named Rosa.
These two relationships and their repercussions (whether fulfilled or merely implied) and the many other characters who become a part of these relationships – whether through resistance or acceptance of them – make the book one which highlights the ways in which simple human emotions can change lives and alter destinies.
The Ventriloquist’s Tale is a novel of many contrasts. The most obvious one is that of the natural indigenous way of life playing against European colonialism. Other contrasts include those that, in some ways, sometimes, mirror that obvious main contrast: men versus women, the city versus the interior and savannahs, Christianity versus Indigenous Beliefs, and change versus the static.
Melville’s writing is, like the forests and savannahs she writes of, lush and seductive. Her prose is poetic and the way she handles what is really a complex and harrowing book, with such skill and finesse, is something that must be complimented. It is almost as if the writer takes your hand and leads you into the setting of the novel, passing information to you along the way, teaching you about the trees so you know how it feels to stand in the shade of each one; showing you the people so that Beatrice, Wifreda, Maba, Danny, Father Napier, Rosa and all the others become clear and crisp, real as real, with all the intricacies and individual touches that make up real people; and, by some miracle, inserting you into the bodies of her characters so every breath, every blush, every spasm of anger is felt and endured.
The novel is harsh when it comes to emotions. It makes the reader feel deeply the pain and anguish of the characters and yet, such dark emotions exist in a space that is extremely beautiful and, in fact, are born out of Melville’s writing, which is the main conveyor of the beauty within the book. It is an interesting phenomenon – to have darkness beneath the beauty – but it is intoxicating and more than enjoyable to read and experience.