Pauline Melville

Her first book, the collection of short stories Shape-Shifter, was published in 1990 and won several awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book (for Western Hemisphere region and Overall Best-Full Commonwealth), the Guardian Fiction Prize,[8] and the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award.[9] A number of the stories deal with post-colonial life in the Caribbean, particularly in her native Guyana, as well as of some stories being set in London. Many of her 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. Salman Rushdie described the collection as "notably sharp, funny, original...part Caribbean magic, part London grime, written in a slippery, chameleon language that is a frequent delight". Other critical acclaim included a review in Publishers Weekly of "this startling debut collection" that concluded: "Melville transforms the mundane yet never loses sight of social inequities or of the pleasures of laughter."[10]

Melville's first novel, The Ventriloquist's Tale (1997), won the Whitbread First Novel Award, the Guyana Prize for Literature, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. In the book – which one reviewer characterised as "a unique look at the conflicts of ancient and modern ways"[11] – Melville explores the nature of fiction and storytelling and writes about the impact of European colonisers on Guyanese Amerindians through the story of a brother and sister. According to Publishers Weekly: "In Melville's ambitious and richly realized debut set in modern-day Guyana, religious, social and philosophical tensions beset all the characters. ...Melville's nuanced characterizations, fluid prose, apt imagery and beautifully understated dialogue augment her skill as a raconteur. An unsentimental but moving narrative about the pain of longing, the book is mystical yet fiercely rationalist, ideological while coolly above politics ... brilliant, witty and complicated."[12] Jay Parini wrote in The New York Times: "In this magnificent novel, Melville shows herself to be a discerning observer and a gifted satirist, the kind who takes no prisoners."[13]

Her 1998 short-story collection, The Migration of Ghosts, is a book of complex layered tales of physical and emotional displacement. According to one reviewer: "A magnificent sense of pacing is the first of Melville's skills that impresses the reader of this mesmerizing collection. The second is her gift for voices ... she has an amazing range, from West Indians in London celebrating carnival, to the self-conscious, resentful Macusi Indian brought by her literal-minded British husband to a wedding in London, to the irritable Canadian wife whose husband has been sent to Guyana for two years to serve as unofficial liar for a mining corporation. Magic realism is the label most readers and critics will paste on Melville's work ... it is an appropriate but incomplete description. The dozen stories spill over with musical chaos and sly humor.... The magic in Melville's eccentric tales is neither good nor bad, white nor black, but the magic of the teeming pluralness and the many possibilities of life."[14]

Melville's novel Eating Air, published in 2009, was called by The Independent "a virtuoso performance, playing with a gallimaufry of characters".[15] Lavinia Greenlaw wrote in the Financial Times: "The world of Pauline Melville’s fiction is one in which people slip in and out of place. It is full of shadows, transgressions and dark secrets. In her second novel, Eating Air, it is a remarkably wide world, flitting from south London to Italy, Brazil to Surinam, across the past 30 years. ... What makes this novel compelling is the way one person leads us to the next, and how we move out of the frame only to find ourselves back at the centre. ...Melville does not need to rely on rhetoric or charm. Her clean style and detached vision allow us to concentrate on what these people actually do as opposed to what they set out to do. This is a book about the difference between intention and action – and how we are acted upon far more than we know."[16]

Of her most recent book, The Master of Chaos and Other Fables, Salman Rushdie was quoted as saying: "In this virtuoso performance, Pauline Melville shows us a world in upheaval, and reminds us that that's where we live."[17] Benjamin Zephaniah writing in Vogue magazine praised the collection, saying: "There is love, politics, compassion, magic, and humour."[18] Selecting "Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary Discuss Their Suicides" from the book as recommended reading, Brandon Taylor of Electric Lit stated: "How deftly Pauline Melville scummons these characters.... It's a marvel of a story about stories that asks probing questions about agency and narrative and what it means to take one's story back for oneself. All told with charm and warm intelligence."[19]

In 1992, her essay "Beyond the Pale" was included in the anthology Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby, as was the poem "Mixed", first published in David Dabydeen's 1998 Rented Rooms.[2][20]

In November 2012, Melville delivered a lecture entitled "Guyanese Literature, Magic Realism and the South American Connection" in the Edgar Mittelholzer Memorial Lecture series at the Umana Yana in Georgetown.[21]

Melville was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.[22][23]

• Ulysses (1967)
• Far from the Madding Crowd (1967), as Mrs. Tall
• The Long Good Friday (1980), as Dora
• Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights (1981), as Herself
• Britannia Hospital (1982), as Clarissa
• Scrubbers (1983), as Crow
• White City (1985), as Woman in dole office
• Mona Lisa (1986), as Dawn
• How to Get Ahead in Advertising (1989), as Mrs. Wailace
• The House of Bernarda Alba (1991)(TV), as Prudencia
• Utz (1992), as Curator
• Shadowlands (1993), as a Committee Chairwoman
• Home Away From Home (1994), as Neighbour
• Brighton Rock (2010), as Mother Superior

• The Young Ones (1982/84, BBC Two), as Woman on Bus (in episode "Demolition") and Vyvyan's mum (in episodes "Boring" and "Sick"), plus witch (in “Sick”)
• Girls on Top (1985, ITV), playing Yvonne (three episodes)
• Happy Families (1985), playing a Warder
• Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988), as Mrs. Scratchit
• The Comic Strip Presents (1988), as Pauline Sneak in episode "Didn't You Kill My Brother?"
• Alexei Sayle's Stuff (1988)
• Red Dwarf (1989), as Barmaid in "Backwards" (uncredited)
• Alas Smith and Jones (1990) (two episodes)
• 2 Point 4 Children (1992), playing Babs in episode "Hormones"
• The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992), as Maisie Kemp in episode "London, May 1916"
• Desmond's (1992), as Mrs. Martin in episode "Too Red Eye"
• Spender (1993), as Judge in episode "The More Things Change"
• Ghostwriter (1994), as Wise Rita (one episode)
• The Bill (1997), as Mrs Austin in "No Trace", Season 13, Episode 136