Shape-Shifter : Stories
by Pauline Melville
- Used
- near fine
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Near Fine/Fine
- ISBN 10
- 0679404384
- ISBN 13
- 9780679404385
- Seller
-
Arlington, Virginia, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
New York: 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.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Books of the World (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- RWARE0000000636
- Title
- Shape-Shifter : Stories
- Author
- Pauline Melville
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Near Fine
- Jacket Condition
- Fine
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First American Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0679404384
- ISBN 13
- 9780679404385
- Publisher
- Pantheon
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- September 1991
- Pages
- 164
- Size
- 8vo
- Keywords
- fiction, short stories, magic realism, immigrants, poverty, supernatural, London, Caribbean, Guyana
- Bookseller catalogs
- Fiction; Britain; Caribbean; Guyana;
Terms of Sale
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- Poor
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