The Master of Chaos

by Pauline Melville

A Nobel laureate struggles to write a convincing suicide note; a hobo sings of hope in the darkest hours after the Grenfell disaster; in a strange post-death waiting room, Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary exchange confidences, and a scientist finally discovers the appalling truth about a boyhood friendship. Unpredictable, haunting, with a streak of black humour, this collection ranges across the world, from Petersburg to Guyana, Syria to London, Argentina to Edinburgh. Its diverse characters are caught up in wars or revolution, escaping the past or finally returning to confront it.

Genres: Short Stories

208 pages, Hardcover

Published July 1, 2021

About the author

A 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.

Reviews

[Rosh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an anthology of fourteen stories with hardly anything common across them. The stories come from varied time periods, and varied localities (Africa, Asia, South America, Europe). Some of the stories leave an imprint on your head and heart while the rest just pass by without creating any dent. As with any anthology, the collection is fairly mixed in terms of its quality. The writing is a mix of the literal and the surreal. I enjoyed the creativity and variety the book offered, but unfortunately, I couldn't connect well with a few of the stories. The title story is one of the best in the book, along with Fable of a Laureate, Reason has its Limits, The Dostoyevsky House, & Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary Discuss Their Suicides.

I can’t help feeling that this could be a good book for the right reader but maybe I wasn’t in that target category. Unfortunately, I can’t put my finger on who the right reader would be because there is no unifying thread or theme across these stories.

Thank you, NetGalley and Sandstone Press, for the ARC of the book in exchange for an honest review.



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[8stitches 9lives · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Master of Chaos is a compelling and unique short story collection primarily set against the recognisable backdrop of the real world but with elements of magical realism. Unpredictable, haunting, with a streak of black humour, this collection of short stories ranges across the world, from Petersburg to Guyana, Syria to London, Argentina to Edinburgh. Its diverse characters are caught up in wars or revolution, escaping the past or finally returning to confront it. There is something here for everyone to enjoy. Highly recommend.

[LilyRose · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Master of Chaos by Pauline Melville is a fascinating collection of short stories that explores chaos in all its guises including addiction, family, war, obsession and tyranny. It is a global and vivid collection where characters in every story attempt to become masters of chaos and captains of chance and fate. The opening short story Masters of Chaos brilliantly sets the tone of the collection depicting a dead grandfather in Guyana who felt the balance of life could be restored through gambling. Anna Karenina and Madame Bowery Discuss Their Suicides is a fun recreation of two powerful women in literature discussing their loves, jealousy, expectations and eventual deaths. There were some stories that were lacking in atmosphere or impact namely A Bright Yellow Bag which felt jarring and strange in the collection. Overall an insightful and entertaining read. 3.5 ⭐️.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book in exchange for honest feedback.

[Shivanee Ramlochan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peculiar, nefarious, and mischievous-mirthful, these are short stories almost eerily suited for the times we're in. It's been some long months since I voluntarily read a collection of short fiction, but it's precisely the peculiarity of many of these tales that rings in the ears long after reading, a linguistic kind of tinnitus. I know that doesn't sound pleasant, but I don't think Melville is striving for the bucolic -- the best offerings in here are downright creepy, crepuscular (and muscular) things that deal in body parts, dissasociative disorders, madness and the insufferable pain of depending on anyone at all. While several of the stories left me untouched, the ones that did shake me rustled me from the roots up, which I grimly appreciate. These aren't comforting fictions, but as the final narrative of the book suggests, even in the darkest age, there might yet be singing.

[Jacob Aron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this short story collection, though can't put my finger on exactly why. As the title suggests, these are fables, and while some have clear sci-fi or fantasy elements, others are set in the real world but still have a sense of unreality to them. Well worth a read. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

[Vansa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm always wary of short stories, they can be so hit-and-miss. This is one of those rare collections that even a short-story skeptic like me would absolutely gush over. These stories are excellently written, and unlike a lot of fairly pretentious, pseudo-modernist short stories that leave you wondering what the point of the last few pages was, none of these fall into that trap. I like Melville's way of writing, where the characters' stories are interwoven with real-world settings -there's a particularly heart-breaking one set during the American invasion of Guyana in the 80s, and an absolutely excellent one in the vein of a Gogol satire, set in modern-day Russia, that was both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply thought-provoking.
I'm knocking off one star, though , since one of the characters she sends up in a story seems to be loosely based on Khodorkovsky, who faced a brutal imprisonment for standing up to corruption, and I'm not entirely sure about her cynicism about dissidents- being jailed isn't exactly a picnic, and she seems to imply dissidents are using it as a badge of honour, which is a strange attitude-there are far easier ways of gaining public approval, and this is not really something that should be mocked.
Her stories cover a range of genres, and styles, and while you may not always agree with the conclusion, they're definitely fascinating.

[Bogdan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked that Pauline Melville names these stories "fables", as in my view, short stories should be fables in prose. They should have a message and a twist which helps to covey the message the author wants to transmit. A task which Pauline does very well with many of her stories.

It is also very interesting how easily she switches from Caribean to Eastern Europe or London background in these stories. And the characters are very much an interesting collection of various individuals.

Overall it was a very nice read.