“What people build holds their stories, buried, it’s true, but sometimes a new fissure lets them escape to find all who might listen. And there are many different witnesses to a life.”

Some stories move like a slow tide, sweeping gently across time and memory. Diana McCaulay’s ‘A House for Miss Pauline’ is one such novel.
Set in the Jamaican village of Mason Hall, the novel opens with 99-year-old Pauline Sinclair waking to the murmur of the stones that built her house. She sees it as a reminder that her time is ending, and that the past must not stay buried. Miss Pauline, once the region’s most well-known ganja farmer, knows she must settle old debts. Her house, made from the ruins of a colonial plantation, holds secrets, including the fate of a white American man who once tried to claim her land. With her granddaughter Justine and a teenage driver named Lamont, she begins a journey across the island to confront the people and choices that shaped her life.

I loved how McCaulay balances this reflective, emotionally heavy quest with a vivid portrait of a rural Jamaican community complete with prose that’s a mix of English and the local patois. The tone is contemplative but also polished with wry humor and tenderness. As the narrative unfolds, McCaulay brings in deeper histories of enslavement and displacement that live beneath Pauline’s personal memories with her house at the center of it all. The stones she used to build the house were from another house belonging to a white man and a slave owner, and Pauline’s stories are indelibly intertwined with them.

Pauline herself is as stubborn as those stones and is determined to bring the original owners of the house together in any way she can. In the process, she learns certain shocking truths about herself, which changes her perspectives and life as she thought it to be. Lamont, the teenage boy reluctantly pulled into Pauline’s mission, is also a well-drawn character. Their relationship, which begins in wary practicality, softens into trust and shared understanding. McCaulay writes them out with care, avoiding sentimentality while allowing their connection to grow.

The novel contains touches of magical realism with its subtle, dreamlike elements like the whispering stones. More than plot devices, they serve as echoes of memory and conscience showing that Pauline’s journey is not simply physical, but moral.

I thought the novel slowed down, unnecessarily, in certain patches but it still doesn’t take away the pleasure of reading Miss Pauline’s story. This is one that requires you to be patient and reflective along with her. And it’s certainly rewarding when you reach the end.

Thanks to Dialogue Books for my ARC.

Great novel, a mix of magical realism, reflection, and the story of the life of woman who's reaching 100yrs
GREat storytelling, characters, and atmosphere.
Thoroughly enjoyed it
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

'A House for Miss Pauline' is a brilliant work of postcolonial fiction inspired by some aspects of the author's family history in Jamaica.

The narrator, Miss Pauline, lives alone in the village of Mason Hall in a house built from the stones of the former slave master's home. Just before she turns 100, she starts hearing messages that tell her that she will die soon and that she needs to confront past secrets. So she summons her granddaughter from New York and embarks on a journey to uncover the truth.

This book is a joy to read, not least because of Miss Pauline's narrative voice which combines foul-mouthed complaints about the modern world with evocative descriptions of her connection to the land. The book effectively interleaves incidents from her past life, including the sexual abuse she received as a schoolgirl and her later successful career as a ganja farmer, with her present-day quest which maintains an element of mystery and intrigue. But the novel also becomes a wider exploration of Jamaican history, slavery and ownership, and offers hopeful ideas of how we might move forward from past trauma.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this superb novel to review!

Diana McCaulay's "A House for Miss Pauline" follows a nearly 100 year-old woman named Pauline who wants to correct all her past mistakes before she dies. Pauline explores her past and her history through the lens of colonialism and slavery. We see how struggle and oppression have made her into the woman she is in the present day. There is a mystery in Miss Pauline's past, and the past relates to history and we can never escape history and its effects on our lives.

It was so refreshing to read a novel set in Jamaica because we don't usually get novels set there. The language and the culture add richness and context to Pauline's story. This is another winner from Diana McCaulay.

I am sorry, I got 36% in and I really tried to muster the will to persevere, but I am giving up. It's not you, book, it is me. Nothing particularly is wrong with the book, it is not offensive (or offensively badly written). The protagonist is quite engaging - a 90 year old Jamaican woman reminiscing about her life, making new friends and being worried about the voices in her house built of stones of an enslaver's mansion. My only and main issue is that by the 36% mark nothing substantial has happened in the novel. There is very little plot, and even less plot progression. The narrative is meandering, and the patois inconsistent, offering quite a boring and derivative text. If you read a lot of Caribbean literature, this one really doesn't stand out, and barely engages.

In this tender wise book we meet 99 year old Miss Pauline, cussing, straight talking, iron strong, full of courage, wearing a cutlass under her skirt, who now lives alone in her house, built with her baby father Clive and his friends, from stones, repurposed from a former plantation house, built by enslaved people. But Miss Pauline is unraveling and conflicted.

Jamaican author Diana McCaulay thoughtfully explores the brutal, haunted history of slavery, grappling with what this history and it's legacy has meant for modern Jamaicans. She looks at architecture and buildings as repositories for human stories. I so enjoyed the rhythm, richness and integrity of Miss Pauline's voice as she observes and unfolds her life and secrets for us the reader. She reminded me of my mother in law which I found very moving. This is a beautiful, deep book that I am still thinking about days after finishing.

This is the story of Miss Pauline Sinclair who is approaching her 100th birthday when the stones and history of her house begin to speak to her in the middle of the night. But what are they trying to tell her and what must she do to find peace.The characters in this book are just wonderful particularly the feisty foul mouthed Miss Pauline and I just loved her relationship with Lamont, the teenager dragging her into the modern world as he helps her unravel some of her secrets. I had not read any novels by this author before but I loved the rural Jamaican that she painted which felt so real I could almost feel the heat and taste the food. A novel of a long life and history but also of the land and belonging and ownership. I thoroughly recommend this novel and will certainly be reading more of this authors backlist now I have discovered her. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel in return for a honest review.

What a special novel

A story about a 100 y ear old woman looking back on her life and making peace, chasing ghosts and looking at the world around her.


There is culture and patois in the story and it weaves its magic through every page. What a treasure to behold! The author mentions the reasons behind her writing the story at the end and it was really interesting her personal link to the stories within.

Can't wait to see what others think.

Miss Pauline is nearly one hundred years old, but as the date of her birthday approaches she begins to hear the stones of her house shifting in the night, begging for her attention. She knows she needs to put her house in order, literally and metaphorically or she feels she won't make one hundred. The past and the future are woven deftly together in the strands of this story about slavery, emancipation and blood and what that means for a sense of home. A brilliantly written slice of history, held taut by a deftly plotted, magical realist story, with an emphasis on the real.