When the stones of her home begin to rattle and call out to her in the quiet of the night, Pauline Sinclair knows she will not live to see her 100th birthday. From educating herself through stolen books to becoming one of the most successful ganja farmers in the area and raising a family, Pauline has lived a life on her own terms in Mason Hall, a rural Jamaican village.

Yet these whispering walls promise to topple the foundations of her security and exhume Pauline's many buried secrets, including the mysterious disappearance of the man who came to claim the very land on which she built her home, stone by stone, from the ruins of a plantation.

Compelled to make peace before she dies, Pauline decides to leave the only home she has ever known on a final, desperate mission to uncover truths she could never have imagined...

Lyrical, funny, eerie and profound, A House for Miss Pauline tells a timely and nuanced tale, infused with the patois and natural beauty of Jamaica, which questions who owns the land on which our identities are forged.

About the Author: 

Diana McCaulay is a Jamaican environmental activist and the award-winning author of five novels. Winner of the Gold Musgrave Medal, Jamaica's highest award for lifetime achievement across the arts and sciences, and twice Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for the Caribbean region (in 2022 and in 2012), she has also been shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Award, among other nominations, and is the winner of the Watson, Little 50 Prize for unrepresented writers aged 50+.

What Our Reviewers Said:

"Miss Pauline is one of the best characters I’ve read this year, and McCaulay’s writing has a way of transporting you to the island and across Miss Pauline’s travels and adventures as she seeks to resolve her affairs."

"There are broad themes running through this novel - atonement for a terrible crime, of racial injustice, of the prevalence of misogyny in society and especially in the world inhabited by Miss Pauline. There are no easy resolutions to this, but it's a lyrical and descriptive evocation of a woman out of place in the world beyond the one she has created for herself."

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