The Ventriloquist's Tale
Pauline Melville
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 1582340269
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
Nick's Trip (Nick Stefanos, Book 2)
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
Bacchus in Romantic England: Writers and Drink, 1780-1830
Triumph of the Darksword (The Darksword Trilogy)
night sky so that anyone who needed to could take a piss. People jumped off and went a little way away into the bush. The journey resumed. The man drove wildly, heedless of safety. The rattling of the truck and its reckless advance frightened Rosa. It was as if everybody else somehow relished this headlong plunge towards oblivion, as if the journey somehow represented their path to extinction. By now they were going at breakneck speed. ‘We’re going to die. We’re going to die,’ chorused the
by her side. She turned from him and looked deliberately away towards where the water spouted in a tiny fall at the bottom of the rocks. It has something to do with the passing of time, she thought. I wish I could stop the passage of time. Danny took off his shorts which were spattered with monkey fat. He balanced himself in the boat and Beatrice pushed it off. She watched him float downstream, a bronze statue, bow drawn, the tree shadows occasionally striping him like a tiger fish. Suddenly,
pottered about looking for a line and hook to go fishing. ‘Tamukang playing his flute,’ said Auntie Wifreda, at the sound of the wind. ‘Who’s Tamukang?’ enquired Bla-Bla as he scrabbled for his school notebook. ‘He plays for Brazil,’ Marietta joked. ‘No. No. Not really. He’s the Master of Fish. He’s in the stars. I’ll show you one night.’ It was April and the house was wrapped in wind. The winds had loosened and shaken themselves out, moaning over the plains. Now they blustered around the
fell as the rain ceased. The rain clouds passed and the stars came out again. Danny came out of the house and shouted to her. He had left Sylvana and his two children at Wichabai and come to take her and her bags to Annai the next day. ‘You have your bags packed and ready? I want us to leave before first light.’ Wifreda had ridden over from Pirara to say goodbye and to collect Sonny. She was in the house with the rest of the family, her face tight and anxious. She did not like goodbyes. The
despaired. She battled to control Wifreda’s boys. Some mornings when classes were due to begin, she would see a horse pass the window with three of the boys astride it and she would not see them again for the rest of the day. When the boys got too unruly, she would call Sam Deershanks who had been midwife to all of them. Despite his threats, he turned out to be a big softie and would only use the strip of cowskin to lash the chair-leg that the culprit was sitting on. Sonny sat at a desk apart
