The Ventriloquist's Tale

Rating:
Summary: An excellent read
Review: I had never heard of Pauline Melville before I read the book. The Ventriloquists Tale ranks as one of the most unusual and remarkable tales that I have ever read. Even though the events take place in a world far removed from modern, urban life the characters come alive. The love affair between two siblings is not intended to shock; rather, it captures the passion and sadness of young, innocent love. There are also other themes running through the book - of race,ethnicity, marriage, religion. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I eagerly look forward to her next novel.

Rating:
Summary: Whitbread Winner for first novel.
Review: In a bookjacket blurb for the British edition, Salman Rushdie describes Melville as "a beguiling new voice....one of the few genuinely original writers to emerge in recent years." High praise. The Ventriloquist's Tale opens and closes with addresses by a mysterious, third person ventriloquist/narrator, representing the old Amerindian culture of myth and magic of southern Guyana, a narrator who indicates that he is not the hero of the book because, as he tells the reader, "Your heroes and heroines are slaves to time.... They've forgotten how to be playful and have no appetite for adventure."

As the narrator unfolds the stories of the McKinnon family, half Scottish and half Wapisiana, we see illustrated in their lives the conflicts (and occasional melding) of their ancient ways with western science, religion, and exploitation. The narrator and, one understands, the author come down strongly on the side of the ancients, as the Amerindian characters enchant, amuse, and play with us while they show us their struggle with European intruders, including, at one point, Evelyn Waugh in search of inspiration. We laugh with them, even as they face privation and hardship, and see with their eyes how ridiculously arrogant and ignorant the intruders are, because the intruders do not see that "everyday life...[is] an illusion behind which [lies] the unchanging reality of dream and myth."

Melville, is, thankfully, not one of the Magic Realists, nor is she a satirist. By presenting the taboo subject of incest realistically as a primary plot line, she emotionally involves the reader--after all, who, among us westerners, is not instinctively repelled by the idea--yet we like the characters involved, we are intrigued by the old beliefs that the eclipse of the sun by the moon is itself an incestuous act, and we understand how limiting it is to reduce eclipses and relationships solely to equations and to write research papers on the structural elements of myth. We see that Father Napier is driven mad because he believes "these [Indians] think entirely in the concrete....[They] have no word for sin, virtue, mercy, kindness, truth..." And we appreciate and rejoice in the brilliance of the Indians in "divining what you would like to hear and saying it, so you can never be really sure what we think....Ventriloquism at its zenith." A fascinating and unusual novel!

Rating:
Summary: The Morality Tale
Review: 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).