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Shape Shifter
A collection of short stories dealing with post-colonial life in the Caribbean, notably in the author's native Guyana, as well as of some stories set in London. Many of the characters, most of them displaced people from former colonies struggling to come to terms with a new life in Britain, attempt to find an identity, to reconcile their past and to escape from the restlessness hinted at in the title.
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Pauline Melville
16 books29 followersA Guyanese author of mixed European and Amerindian ancestry, Pauline Melville has emerged in the last few years as a leading Caribbean writer, and one of the most accomplished talents on the modern literary scene.
Shape-shifter, her first collection of stories, revealed the impressive extent of her abilities, and won the 1991 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book) and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Her first novel, The Ventriloquist's Tale, won the Whitbread First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
A professional actress in Europe before making it as a published writer, Melville has a cosmopolitan knowledge of both the Old and the New Worlds, and her fiction informs her experiences with her own mixed cultural heritage, Western philosophy nudging shoulders with Amerindian creation myths and the resulting blend touched with a sardonic, iconoclastic wit.
Shape-shifter, her first collection of stories, revealed the impressive extent of her abilities, and won the 1991 Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Overall Winner, Best First Book) and the Guardian Fiction Prize. Her first novel, The Ventriloquist's Tale, won the Whitbread First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction.
A professional actress in Europe before making it as a published writer, Melville has a cosmopolitan knowledge of both the Old and the New Worlds, and her fiction informs her experiences with her own mixed cultural heritage, Western philosophy nudging shoulders with Amerindian creation myths and the resulting blend touched with a sardonic, iconoclastic wit.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 13, 2024
THE SHAPE OF LIMINALITY
Magic realism and factual reality are mixed in this collection of stories which sees people from the Carribean as protagonists in their countries (mostly Jamaica and Guyana) or in the UK.
This third, liminal space in which they leave, between their culture and the ex-colonizer's seems to occupy the center of Melville's narration.
Magic realism and factual reality are mixed in this collection of stories which sees people from the Carribean as protagonists in their countries (mostly Jamaica and Guyana) or in the UK.
This third, liminal space in which they leave, between their culture and the ex-colonizer's seems to occupy the center of Melville's narration.
July 20, 2019
Yazarın da Guyana kökenli olmasından dolayı kitaptaki öyküler genelde mekan olarak Guyana, Jamaika, Batı Hint Adaları, Karayipleri ya da buradan insanların göç ettiği İngiltere’de geçiyor. O yüzden ne kadar hikayelerin birkaçı dışında çok ilgi çekici konuları olmasa da kendini okutuyor.
Tanrısal Bacaklı Kız ve Kapıyı Açık Bırakmışsın ise şaşırtıcı konulara sahip olan farklı hikayeler.
Tanrısal Bacaklı Kız ve Kapıyı Açık Bırakmışsın ise şaşırtıcı konulara sahip olan farklı hikayeler.
January 13, 2022
CW: Sexual assault
Short story collections are hard to rate and review because I enjoyed the first and last stories in this collection but disliked most of the other stories. The first story had a good atmosphere and logical plot that utilized magical realism. I'd give that story 3 stars. I also loved the writing style in the last story, its themes, and its narrator. The last story was a 4-star story for me. However, most of the stories in this were 1-star or 2-star stories for me.
Melville is very good at writing about places and creating an atmosphere in her story. The one issue I had with her writing style though was the dialogue. The use of dialect would either be over-the-top or nonexistent. And the speech itself didn't sound like something a real person would say, rather the dialogue is what the author wants their character to say so the audience can get their theme. I also often found the pacing of the short stories to be off and the character motivations to be unbelievable.
Additionally, I don't think all the stories work as a collection and contribute to the theme of adaptation and movement between colonized and colonizing countries and cultures. In particular, as we move through the stories set in London, the later ones seem to depart from this theme, focusing on issues of class and gender as almost separate from the issues of race and ethnicity.
Short story collections are hard to rate and review because I enjoyed the first and last stories in this collection but disliked most of the other stories. The first story had a good atmosphere and logical plot that utilized magical realism. I'd give that story 3 stars. I also loved the writing style in the last story, its themes, and its narrator. The last story was a 4-star story for me. However, most of the stories in this were 1-star or 2-star stories for me.
Melville is very good at writing about places and creating an atmosphere in her story. The one issue I had with her writing style though was the dialogue. The use of dialect would either be over-the-top or nonexistent. And the speech itself didn't sound like something a real person would say, rather the dialogue is what the author wants their character to say so the audience can get their theme. I also often found the pacing of the short stories to be off and the character motivations to be unbelievable.
Additionally, I don't think all the stories work as a collection and contribute to the theme of adaptation and movement between colonized and colonizing countries and cultures. In particular, as we move through the stories set in London, the later ones seem to depart from this theme, focusing on issues of class and gender as almost separate from the issues of race and ethnicity.
September 17, 2019
I reread this collection of shorts, set in Guyana and immigrant London in the 1960s and 70s. They are acutely observed and sharply written, and have aged well, I felt. Shillings, greengrocers and fashion may have changed, but people not so much. The Caribbean stories are heavy with sight and smell, black magic and potions, the London ones with immigrant nostalgia and racism, but feels somehow not quite as harsh as today. Money problems, theft and fractured relationships pervade. The shape shifting theme isn’t sustained throughout, and whilst there are some classic twists in the tail, some of the later ones have weak endings, but overall it is an enjoyable collection.
July 16, 2018
Enjoyable enough collection of post-colonial Carribean short stories - travelling full circle from Guyana to London and back again. First book I think I've read written by a one time extra from The Bill
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March 15, 2020Really really amazing, one of the more consistently great short story collections I've read. All very different but never boring
February 24, 2019
I can't help saying that the whole point of a book is to have an interconnection with the readers until the very end and Shape-Shifter failed at that one job.
https://anotherbibliolater.blogspot.c...
https://anotherbibliolater.blogspot.c...
October 1, 2012
Enjoyable enough set of stories with various locations & atmospheres,including tropical Guyana; the best stories were the 'slice of life' ones,with well-delineated characters,& unusual settings.There is a poetic sensibility too,with some fine passages of prose with poetic pretensions! A something for everyone collection,easily digested with your bed-time cocoa with demerara sugar!
June 16, 2015
The first story was quite funny. The rest was too bitty and disconnected. This book is okay for a bit of easy entertainment, but I'm not sure that Pauline Melville really has anything to say. Perhaps I don't like collections of short stories? No, I think it's more that I want a collection to hang together in some way, to be more than the sum of its parts. This book didn't cut it for me.
May 24, 2015
This didn't work for me. A lot of potential, interesting characters and language, but most of the stories had no closure and were not tied together in any discernible way. The first story in the collection was pretty good, but I found many of the others unsatisfying.
August 29, 2011
Relatos sueltos. Empieza bien, y tiene puntos muy divertidos, aunque se hace un poco pesado a ratos.
May 23, 2017
'girl with the celestial limb'
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews