bookshelf

MOTHER OF PEARL

Name: MOTHER OF PEARL
Author: Mary Morrissy
ISBN: 0-684-19667-0

by Mary Morrissy ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1995

bookshelf

A triptych about motherhood—portraits of three troubled women whose stories are deeply, darkly, inextricably linked—from critic and first-novelist Morrissy, fiction reviewer for The Irish Times. When Irene Rivers, who's already suffered the indignities of tuberculosis and an unloving family, realizes that she'll never give birth to a child of her own, she walks into a hospital maternity ward and walks out with a tiny baby girl she names Pearl. Several years later, the truth comes out. Irene is taken to jail, and Pearl, now called Mary, is returned to Rita Spain, the mother she's never known. Rita, a widow with a younger child, must come to terms with the fact that her kidnapped child was a baby she'd not welcomed wholeheartedly to begin with. Little Mary, meanwhile, is never told the story of her ordeal—an improbably kept secret, since her kidnapping made headlines for months. As she grows up, Mary is tormented with confused visions of lost children that eventually lead her to destroy her own marriage and her own chance at motherhood. Morrissy writes with the grace of a poet. Particularly—if bleakly—compelling is her depiction of Irene's early life: the bullying lighthouse-keeper father, the superstitious mother, and the scenes of daily life in the TB sanitorium with its petulant, coughing cardplayers and endless gray afternoons. Lovestruck Rita Spain, fresh from the convent and plunged into a shotgun marriage, makes another vivid portrait. Naive, slightly spoiled, she never knows quite what to feel about her disappointing, runty, premature baby—a baby someone else apparently wanted more than she did. Unfortunately, it's this baby's own story that's the weakest part of the picture. Mary/Pearl is only a shadow. We never fully see her—which makes the novel's resolution, while moving, not really satisfying. Boldly painted and full of promise, but not quite finished.

Pub Date: July 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-684-19667-0

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

bookshelf

Sisters in and out of love.

Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.

Pub Date: May 1, 2003

ISBN: 0-345-45073-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

bookshelf

THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

bookshelf

Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.