A collection of twelve stories, features stories of a hapless petty thief, a light-skinned Guyanese girl, and a stranger in England who experiences a recurrent nightmare
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A first collection of 12 stories (winner of the Guardian Prize in England) that shifts intelligently between London, Guyana, and the Caribbean: very good on local patois and custom, as well as dramatizing a sense of dislocation and a yearning for home. ``Eat Labba and Drink Creek Water,'' a series of instances on ocean-hopping juxtaposed to variations on the myths of El Dorado, most explicitly voices this mood: ``We do return and leave and return again, criss-crossing the Atlantic, but whichever side of the Atlantic we are on, the dream is always on the other side.'' In ``A Disguised Land,'' a woman in England from Jamaica for an unhappy reunion with her mother kites checks and goes on the dole in order to feed her kids, then gets a jail term while pregnant and, after delivering the baby, escapes with it, only to return to the jail with a TV crew--having made an adjustment of sorts to her new home. In ``The Iron and the Radio Have Gone,'' the roles are reversed when a well-meaning Quaker woman goes to Guyana and fails to adapt when confronted by a break-in, street urchins, and various other manifestations of local color. Other stories are quirkier, but there's usually some sort of intercultural transaction at the center of every piece: ``the Conversion of Millicent Vernon,'' for instance, finds the title character trying to save her rotting teeth by pledging ``secret allegiance to the Congo pump tree,'' recommended by a local spirit-man. ``You Left the Door Open,'' about the transformations of a woman attacked while she's sleeping, has a paranoid film noir feel to it, along with a manic edge hovering between horror and black humor. Even the few pieces that are structurally flimsy have a strong sense of place and dialect. A promising debut: Melville's transatlantic stories, in particular, capture the conflict between the exotic and the ordinary. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
In this startling debut collection, which won England's prestigious Guardian Prize, hard-luck Londoners and Caribs find themselves and their environs in a state of metamorphosis. In "The Conversion of Millicent Vernon," a West Indian teenager abandons Christianity after an per web obeah man recommends tree worship to save her rotting teeth; the protagonist of "The Truth Is in the Clothes" discovers that the back wall of her London flat opens up on her native Jamaica; "The Girl with the Celestial Limb" concerns a shop girl whose leg turns into a black hole that threatens to swallow her. The prominence of the supernatural notwithstanding, these 12 stories are firmly rooted in reality. From an incarcerated Jamaican mother's dulled anguish to a poor woman's desperate efforts to befriend a doctor's wife, Melville depicts people marginalized by the color of their skin or by the emptiness of their pocketbooks in a way that transcends whimsy. The pained social consciousness behind these stories is leavened by a sharp wit, as in "Tuxedo," a tale about a would-be safecracker who talks to his maker "Jamaica-style" because "it makes God feel more like one of the boys." Shaman-like, Melville transforms the mundane yet never loses sight of social inequities or of the pleasures of laughter.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. First American Edition. Pantheon, September 1991. Hardcover. First American Edition (stated). Near Fine book in a Fine jacket. Dust stains to top edge, otherwise As New. Unread. Not from a library. No remainder mark. Not clipped. 164 pages. Winner of the Guardian Prize, the Guyana Prize, and the Macmillan Silver Pen Award. In this startling debut collection hard-luck Londoners and Caribs find themselves and their environs in a state of metamorphosis. In "The Conversion of Millicent Vernon," a West Indian teenager abandons Christianity after an per web obeah man recommends tree worship to save her rotting teeth; the protagonist of "The Truth Is in the Clothes" discovers that the back wall of her London flat opens up on her native Jamaica; "The Girl with the Celestial Limb" concerns a shop girl whose leg turns into a black hole that threatens to swallow her. The prominence of the supernatural notwithstanding, these 12 stories are firmly rooted in reality. From an incarcerated Jamaican mother's dulled anguish to a poor woman's desperate efforts to befriend a doctor's wife, Melville depicts people marginalized by the color of their skin or by the emptiness of their pocketbooks in a way that transcends whimsy. The pained social consciousness behind these stories is leavened by a sharp wit, as in "Tuxedo," a tale about a would-be safecracker who talks to his maker "Jamaica-style" because "it makes God feel more like one of the boys." Shaman-like, Melville transforms the mundane yet never loses sight of social inequities or of the pleasures of laughter. Contents: I do not take messages from dead people -- The iron and the radio have gone -- The conversion of Millicent Vernon -- A disguised land -- Tuxedo -- A quarrelsome man -- About that two pounds, Mrs Parrish -- McGregor's journey -- The truth is in the clothes -- You left the door open -- The girl with the celestial limb -- Eat labba and drink creek water. Seller Inventory # RWARE0000000636
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