Commonwealth Short Story Prize
The Whale House and Other Stories
Against the social tensions of Trinidad, the story brings loss, violence and family secrecy into view with a restrained voice. It lets unease surface inside everyday life, alongside the sense of a place marked by history and community.
Work Information
Beneath the quiet of daily life, what has been lost and concealed slowly comes into view.
The Whale House is the Caribbean regional winner of the 2013 Commonwealth Short Story Prize and was later collected in Peepal Tree Press’s The Whale House and other stories. The publisher page identifies it as an included story and confirms ISBN 9781845232498.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Peepal Tree Pr Ltd
- Published
- 2015-07-01
- Pages
- 171 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 13.34 x 1.78 x 20.96 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9781845232498
- ISBN-10
- 9781845232498
- Price
- 2978 JPY
- Category
- 洋書/Literature & Fiction/Short Stories/Single Author
A boy is killed on a government minister&;s orders as part of his mission to clean up the country and others made complicit must explore their consciences; a youth gets ready to play his role in the country&;s lucrative kidnap business; a sister tries to make peace with the parents of the white American girl her brother has murdered; a gangster makes his posthumous lament. Trinidad in all its social tumult is ever present in these stories, which range across the country&;s different ethnic communities, across rural and urban settings, from locals and expatriates to the moneyed elite and the poor scrabbling for survival. What ties the collection together is Sharon Millar&;s achievement of a distinctively personal voice: cool, unsentimental and empathetic. If irony is the only way to inscribe contemporary Trinidad, there is also room for both generous humor and the possibility of redemption.
Sharon Millar is the recipient of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Small Axe Short Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Granta Online , the Manchester Review , and Small Axe , and was also featured in the anthology Pepperpot: The Best New Stories from the Caribbean .
Reviews
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Life in an industrialized Caribbean island, good and bad, as told through a collection of short stories.
Enjoyable reading for anyone who wants to sample authentic flavours of various aspects of West Indian society. The stories paint vivid images of lifestyles and landscapes in the Caribbean.
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I enjoyed reading this book - Millar brings out the various ...
I enjoyed reading this book - Millar brings out the various issues in Trinidad's social tumult very cleverly. I rate it 9 out of 10!! Katherine Lawrence
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Tropical Gothic
Sharon Millar is an exciting new voice from the Caribbean. Her writing is crisp and clean, layered with nuance and detail, a kind of tropical Gothic. Highly recommend.
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Quite intriguing
This book was quite intriguing, kept you expecting more in each story. I look forward to more of this author's work.