Pearl

by Mary Gordon

A New York Times Bestseller On Christmas night, 1998, Maria Meyers - a New York single mother with a radical past - receives a call from the State her daughter, Pearl, has chained herself to the flagpole outside the American embassy in Dublin and has not eaten in six weeks. Maria, who has always congratulated herself on Pearl's liberal upbringing, reexamines all her assumptions as she flies to Ireland, determined to prevent her daughter's death.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Literary Fiction, Ireland, Historical Fiction, Contemporary, Novels

648 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Mary Catherine Gordon is an American writer from Queens and Valley Stream, New York. She is the McIntosh Professor of English at Barnard College. She is best known for her novels, memoirs and literary criticism. In 2008, she was named Official State Author of New York.

Reviews

[Carol Storm · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, once again Mary Gordon is back, with another long, slow, soggy novel of Catholic guilt, cheap man-bashing feminism, and crude shanty Irish bigotry and self-pity. This time the plot is quite bizarre -- a spoiled Manhattan princess jets to Ireland and chains herself to the American embassy to illustrate her horror at man's inhumanity to man. Specifically she seems to be all choked up about some Irish boy who washed out of the IRA or something. Funny how the princess had to fly all the way to Ireland to find doomed, broken boys to feel sorry for. I hear the prisons in America are full of boys, most of them black or brown. But I suppose a "liberal" Irish Catholic like Mary Gordon doesn't see black boys in prison as having the same allure as Bobby Sands or Wolfe Tone or Patrick Sarsfield or Mary McCarthy or Studs Lonigan!

This book is not only melodramatic and overwrought, (yes, Mary, I said "overwrought") it is screamingly funny in all the wrong places. For example, Pearl's mother Maria is supposed to have been a hippy yippie student radical back in the Sixties. And there is a long (some would say endless) passage at the beginning describing the feverish uncertainty and the horror, the horror, of living through those days as an angry young college girl. (Was it really that much worse than combat in Vietnam, Mary?) And of course we all know hippies really "dig" that crazy rock and roll music, so Mary keeps quoting lyrics from -- from -- wait for it -- wait for it -- "Feeling Groovy (The 59th Street Bridge Song)" by Simon and Garfunkel.

Now call me crazy, but I don't think the really mean, hardcore, bomb throwing SDS type radicals on campus had much time for Simon and Garfunkel. I think Mary Gordon is laughably out of touch, and that it renders the entire hippy section unbelievable and unreadable. Some more believable hippy tunes for the gang:

"Wooden Ships" by Crosby Stills, Nash and Young
"Going Home" by Alvin Lee and Ten Years After
"Going Up The Country" by Canned Heat
"For What It's Worth" by the Buffalo Springfield
"Feel Like I'm Fixin To Die Rag" by Country Joe and The Fish.

Note well that I was born in 1963, and I have a better idea of good Sixties rock and roll than Mary Gordon. What was this woman really doing all through the Sixties? Sitting in a dark room, saying the rosary with the shades drawn? She sure writes like it!

This is more than just a matter of baby-boomer nostalgia. As a sweaty, desperate social climber from Queens, Mary puts an awful lot of emphasis on the value of "good taste." She claims that one way Pearl can tell that Bobby Sands is not a real martyr is that he writes lousy poetry. (Try that one for logic!) But it therefore follows, using this same logic, that hippies who listen to "Feeling Groovy" instead of "Wooden Ships" are fake hippies, not the real thing. It's a matter of taste, and the irony is that poor, mean, stuck up snob Mary Gordon really has no taste when it comes to rock and roll music. No taste at all.

By the way -- in 1863 there was a major race riot in New York City. A certain portion of the rioters were Irish-Americans. Most of the victims were black. If Mary Gordon is really interested in the "will to harm" maybe she could write about that.

Or maybe not.

[Carol Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started this book once before and put it down because I found it implausible that an American girl would chain herself to a lamppost in Dublin and try to starve to death over the Troubles in Ireland. But I was wrong. Since I've read more novels by the profound Mary Gordon, I realized that I should read this one, and I found it to be just as deep as her others.

This is a book about different kinds of love and commitment. Most of all, it's a story about the love of a mother for her daughter. It's rare to have a fine novel about a mother and daughter who love each other.

Maria, an extrovert who rebelled against Catholicism and injustice in the '60s, has always had difficulty understanding Pearl, who was a quiet child. But Maria, incredulous that Pearl is rebelling, rushes from New York to Ireland to try to save her.

A close friend of the family, Joseph, a widower who is aesthetically inclined, rushes from Rome for the girl to whom he has been like a father. I thought the touch of calling these old friends with a close Platonic relationship Maria and Joseph was too obvious, as was Pearl's name. But those were the only obvious things about this book.

Pearl has become involved with Irish Republicans who want to liberate the Catholics of Northern Ireland. In fact, they belong to the Real IRA, the most violent faction. She wants to die because she feels she has betrayed a rather clueless boy. She wants her death to be her word witnessing for peace. She doesn't know enough about her mother's background to see how her political involvement echoes events in her mother's youth. In the context of the story, Pearl's action is believable.

Gordon uses her characters to illuminate the world. I was moved and provoked to thought. I did find the device of a narrator, clearly the author, popping in occasionally, to be clumsy. The book could have done very well without that. But do not pass up this fine examination of politics, spirituality (a word Gordon says has become trite), and love.

[Christopher Russell LP · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are stories that help you for personal reasons. This is one of them. It contains the following sentence which I keep with me at all times: "Blame is solid platform we can stand on, a still place in the whirlwind. It tells us: this happened because of that; it could have been avoided. Whereas the unbearable possibility is that nothing can be avoided, the wind bloweth where it listeth and becomes a whirlwind that takes everything up: indiscriminate, violent, incapable of turning or slowing down because of any human word."

[Abbey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book based on my interest in the subject matter (Northern Ireland, The Troubles), but was very disappointed. The novel begins as a mother learns her daughter, Pearl, who has been studying Irish at Trinity College, has gone on a hunger strike and chained herself to a flag pole at the American Embassy in Dublin. The book follows the characters in real time while also exploring the main characters' pasts in an attempt to make sense of the present.

I didn't feel connected to any of the characters, and I did not find Pearl's actions believable. Even when her reasons for doing so are made clear, it all feels "off" and I can't buy the story.

I also find the narrator, who appears often throughout the novel, annoying and just plain out of place. The narrator's voice interrupts the flow of the story, asking readers things like "Would you like me to tell you the story of...?" Bizarre.

The final straw for me occurred when the author describes the 1998 bombing in Omagh (an event which has a big impact on Pearl) and states that Omagh is in County Fermanagh. It is, in fact, in County Tyrone. There are only 6 counties in Northern Ireland, so she had a 1 in 6 chance of getting it right, but failed.

[Wisewebwoman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A complex book about mothers and daughters, religion, violence in Ireland and tremendous guilt.

A young woman chains herself to the American Embassy in Dublin and is at the end of her hunger strike when she is forcibly removed to hospital.

Meanwhile her mother and her uncle/stepfather are on their way to intervene in their own disparate ways. And thereby hangs the tale.

I was initially irritated by the device of the all-knowing narrator but within a short while realized this was the only way the novel could work.

If you like your books literary and reflective and feminist, this one will agree with you.

[Catherine Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Seattle Times called this book "both an exploration of mother-daughter dynamics and an exploration of faith", which it is, but also so much more. How deeply complex and flawed and sometimes unlovable the three main characters are - and in the end ...well, I don't want to spoil it. It’s about forgiveness for our very real human flaws; about being loved with our flaws seen and known. At times, reading this was like being inside my head - so much going on and loving every minute of it. Thank you Mary Gordon.

[Orla Hegarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book connected with me on multiple personal levels. I am a first generation Canadian - Irish. I raised my own daughter on my own and my 23 yo daughter is currently doing an internship in Cambodia.

The exploration of conflict and deep personal relationships developed through blood, longevity or brevity of strong ties as well as the overall meaning of life are artfully and deeply explored in this story.

[Ron Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the grand old political slogans don't ring so clear in the age of terror. "Give me liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry cried at the end of his heroic speech in 1775. And since 1969 the people of New Hampshire have stamped "Live Free or Die" on their license plates. I used to think that was a glorious choice. But now, as the world seems daily torn by men unwilling to compromise or deliberate, that spirit of absolutism sounds fatalistic, even fatal. I wish I could hear more of the sentiment from the gracious opening of Henry's speech in which he admitted, "Different men often see the same subject in different lights."

A penetrating novel called "Pearl," by Mary Gordon, explores the allure of political extremism in starkly personal terms. How glorious, Gordon asks, is the choice between ideals or death when a loved one is choosing suicide?

The story opens on Christmas night, 1998, in New York when Maria gets a call from the State Department that her daughter, Pearl, has chained herself to a flagpole at the American Embassy in Dublin and may die from starvation. For Maria, who knows Pearl is a shy girl studying languages at Trinity College, this news is as baffling as it is terrifying. She calls Joseph, an old family friend in Rome who thinks of Pearl as a daughter, and the two of them set off immediately for Ireland from their separate locations.

It's a marvel that Gordon makes this so compelling because after those two phone calls, nobody moves or speaks for almost 200 pages. Maria and Joseph are strapped into their seats on different planes; Pearl lies on the cold ground in Dublin. And yet, by tracing how these three very different people have come to their desperate positions, Gordon tells a gripping story.

Impatient, dramatic, and self-righteous, Maria has been protesting since her own youth, when she pored over saints' lives, fantasizing about the glory of martyrdom. Later, when her father moved to protect her from radical friends during the Vietnam War, she cut him off, never spoke to him again, and never regretted showing him that her ideals matter more than anything else.

But now, she's speeding halfway around the world to convince a daughter making her own political protest that "Nothing is worth your life."

Joseph, meanwhile, is conflicted by his own reactions. Reserved where Maria is headstrong, he's torn between the terror of losing his beloved Pearl and the depressing prospect of living in a world in which nothing is worth dying for. How, he wonders, can he possibly save this girl while protecting her from everyone's condescension, from the assumption that she must be deluded to make such a deadly protest?

Of course, neither of them can imagine why Pearl would fast for six weeks and then handcuff herself to an embassy flagpole. "As long as I've known her," Maria thinks, "she's been only marginally aware of politics."

In a typed statement full of confused confessions and noble platitudes, Pearl announces that she's giving her life in witness to the death of a simple young man who was hit by a car several months earlier. He was the nephew of an IRA terrorist, but she had nothing to do with his death, which by all accounts was simply a tragic accident. "I am doing this in the name of justice," she writes, "in witness to the truth [because] I have learned that I am capable of harming."

Then suddenly, Gordon comes crashing in: "Of course we do not agree with her."

It's impossible not to be startled by these strangely ironic narrative intrusions: "Let us go back to September 1967," she says at the opening of one section. "You want to know about Pearl's birth," she writes at another. "Does it help you understand why she is where she is?" she asks. "I will use this time to tell you about her past."

No storyteller has spoken to me like this since Mom stopped cutting my meat at dinner. I understand that Gordon is toying with us, calling attention to the act of storytelling, deconstructing our faith in the ability of narrative to explain others' actions, to connect one baffling event to another. And I'm sure this technique will be enthusiastically debated around the English department water cooler (Gordon teaches at Barnard College in New York). But ordinary people are likely to find it more obtrusive than witty. And I'm not convinced that her narrative hand-holding adds much to a story that's already packed with the weight of a dozen religious and political themes.

Readers who don't like someone telling them when to turn the page may give up, and that's too bad because in search of an explanation for Pearl's behavior, Gordon takes us deep into the tragedy of Irish terrorism and the familial tensions of extremism.

Pearl, it turns out, has witnessed some particularly ghastly atrocities, and in despair she hopes her death will make the kind of pure protest she could never make with her life.

For her liberal mother, who's led a life of rebellion on somebody else's dime, Pearl's bodily sacrifice inspires a complicated crisis of faith. Gordon turns this problem in every direction, and there are moments when the novel sags under the burden of its cogitation, but the issues couldn't be more relevant to our time. The martyr, the hunger striker, the suicide bomber, the terrorist, they all share that pure faith in well-orchestrated death.

Joseph and Maria and their sacrificial child (religious references come on thick as the book draws to a close) must find some way to resist that deadly purity and affirm their lives. Gordon follows this crisis with deep respect for the difficulties involved and never arrives at anything like an answer, but the light she sheds along the way is very provocative.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0125/p1...

[Dennis Fischman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book centers around an incident in the life of a young woman, Pearl, who is studying the Irish language in Dublin around the time that the Provisional IRA signs a peace agreement with the British government after years of violence aimed at uniting Ireland. She falls in with a splinter group, the Real IRA, which carries out a car bombing in Omagh to protest the peace agreement and kills dozens of civilians.

In the story, Pearl's Irish friends send a slow-minded young comrade to the police station to leave a dirty joke behind, but he lingers and gets caught. When he is released, Pearl is furious at them all and asks him, "How could you be so stupid?" When he is later hit by a car in the middle of a road, Pearl (probably mistakenly) thinks he committed suicide because she shamed him.

As the book opens, Pearl has chained herself to the U.S. embassy gates in Dublin and intends to starve herself to death as a witness against the violence, and against the human propensity to do harm.

Her mother (a woman of action who was involved in protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960's) is flying in from New York to try to save her daughter's life, berating herself because it's clear she has misunderstood her daughter on a basic level.

And her mother's best friend, the son of a servant in her father's house whom her father raised as a high church Catholic and an aesthete) is flying in from Italy to the rescue, too, but wondering why nobody else sees Pearl's actions as moral heroism.

The book follows all three characters, switching viewpoints among them. (There is also an omniscient narrator who calls the reader to account from time to time.)

Pearl is probably a very good book--it brings two important times in history to life, and it dramatizes the author's philosophical concerns through the struggles of her characters--but I didn't like it at all. Who are these people? How can a young woman reach twenty years of age and not yet discover that she can harm other people--and when she does discover it, how can she think that giving up her life isn't a way of harming them more?

Toward the end of the book, the moral questions reflect less of Mary Gordon's Catholic background (how do we expiate our sins?) and more of her Jewish background (when we have already failed them in major ways, how do we go on taking care of people we love?) Needless to say, the second set of questions engaged me more. So, my rating of this book is entirely personal. You may think it's the best thing you've ever read.

[julia bedulia · Rating 5 out of 5]

i technically haven’t finished this book yet but this book literally
okay
so i have a really old copy, purchased from charlotte elliot in hampden baltimore, and i literslly shattered the spine because of how msny annotations i put in this book
so yeah this book is really good and you can tell that mary gordon put her heart and soul into it

[Ruby · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Novel)—I loved this book—it just grabbed me and didn’t let me go for some time. It is the story of a sensitive young woman named Pearl who commences a hunger strike and chains herself to the flag pole in front of the American embassy in Dublin as a dramatic “act of witness” to her friend’s senseless death. The embassy summons her mother, who is joined by their dearest family friend, to Dublin to help Pearl deal with her emotional crisis. The story is told by an unnamed narrator whose voice is intense and demanding. The first time through, I felt like the narrator was almost yelling at me. The second time, it felt more like the narrator and I were two friends who were having an intense discussion about a family we both knew, but one which the narrator knew better than I did and cared about deeply. I finally decided that the narrator is really the author, telling us her perspective of the characters. The complexity of the characters’ relationships feels true to life, particularly the intense dynamic between Pearl and her mother. The foremost reason I love this story is the ending—it is a beautiful ode to the healing power of forgiveness, a power I count on constantly. However, I must warn my friends that my book club didn't like this novel anywhere near as much as I did. They particularly hated the technique of the unknown narrator--they felt it showed laziness on the part of the author.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could give 3.5 stars, I would give that many to this book.

It was hard to get into. I was annoyed by the constant narrative interpolations--"Perhaps this uncertainty marks my failure as a chronicler. Nevertheless, this is the way I must tell the story of those times." ""We'll get on with the story. With one of the stories. For now we again take up the chronicle." Gordon interweaves three points of view, which is a complex & admirable undertaking, but surely there was a less talky way to do it.

I slogged through the first half just because others (such as Maxine Hong Kingston) had bestowed high praise on this novel. Then the second half started drawing me in. And toward the end it drew tears.

Gordon worries constantly over maternal love--its power, its ability to harm & blight as well as to bless & save. Not one of my personal obsessions. And generally she fusses too much over her characters' thoughts & motivations. But here they are struggling with questions I have struggled with--is living worth it? can I give anything of real value to others? what to do with all the pain of the world? All three of the protagonists--Pearl, Maria, Joseph--are God-haunted, though they are not "believers," & their journeys lead them to genuine forgiveness & maturing. That is satisfying.

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Pearl" was not a happy book, it is full of struggles...modern day struggles of religon, beliefs, politics, sacrifice, martyrdom, and family bonds, particularly mother-daughter relationships...but I loved the 3rd person omniscent narative. I feel like the narrator was part of the story, perhaps the voice of god, or someone once involved in the story but had passed like Maria's father, Pearl's father, devorah, or the boy who pearl's death will "witness".

For me personally, the story highlighted my own struggles with being a mother and acceptance of my own mother. I can relate to wanting "the best" for your child, but your idea of what's best might not actually be what is best for your child. And when you are the child in question, feeling like your parent does try not understand you...This books helps me to realize it is helpful to take a step back and accept your family members for who they are.

And...I am once again embarrassed of my lack of awareness of the political unrest in Ireland during my own lifetime.

I loved this book, it was a more difficult read but extremely worth the time.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I disliked this novel. The eponymous character, an American student studying in Ireland, has starved herself in an attempt to make a statement with her death. Our anonymous, omniscient, and very smug narrator guides us through the aftermath and the effects of Pearl's actions on her mother Maria, and Maria's childhood friend Joseph. The names are not coincidental; while this is technically an historical novel, much strenuous effort is spent considering Catholicism and the role of the Church in the lives of the devout and in the lives of those who have left the fold. Maria, Joseph, and Pearl are all unlikeable and, although subjected to their innermost thoughts, the reader never truly understands these characters or their motivations, or feels that a consistent character has emerged from the pages. This would have been passable, but the stilted dialogue and not-quite stream of consciousness analysis of every word thought or uttered by every character gets old quickly. Yes, powerful events can lead to self-analysis and epiphanies, but I don't think that anyone really follows the streams of thought put forward here. Suffice it to say I can't recommend this one.

[Leah · Rating 2 out of 5]

My feelings about this book are hard to describe. I found it a difficult book to finish. I wanted to like it, but it took until at least 1/2 way through the book to even care about a single one of the main characters.

One of the reviews says that Gordon's writing is poetic. Perhaps it is too poetic for me. There were so many times when I found myself wanting to scream, "Just get to the point! What happened next?" Gordon lets us in on every little (and grand) thought that each character has. There were times when I really didn't care.

In the end, I was glad that I forced myself to finish the book. It made me think about topics I don't often explore. It did offer an opportunity to explore The Troubles of Ireland and how they might have affected people. It did make me think about the value of a human life, the influence we each have on one another without realizing, and just how nutty people can be. However, had I known what it was going to be like, I wouldn't have started it. For my tastes, more than a whee bit too much navel gazing.

I'm sure there are those people who are moved to tears by Pearl. I was just glad to have made it to the end.

[Wendy Brown-Baez · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book gave me so much to think about. A story of a young woman who chains herself to a post to starve herself in order to protest the violence in Ireland, her distraught mother and priest who is a close friend, and all the implications of witnessing and protest, hunger and food, and whether or not we are allowed to use our lives as we see fit. Although I agree with some of the other reviews that the central characters were self-involved and hard to identify with, the issues that were brought up took the story out of the personal to the universal. Did the girl chain herself to make a statement or out of guilt? Did the priest really believe he could save her by sequestering her or was he delusional under strain and exhaustion? Do we have a right to how we decide to die? Or do we belong to those who love us? I had a hard time getting into it but once there, I couldn't let go.

[Anita Dalton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Many of some of the most acclaimed writers break every writing rule and god bless them because rules are just to get people started, a means of learning. So write ye merry unpublished and know that all those rules used to reject your manuscript will not matter once you reach the right audience, once you hit the right formula. For much can be forgiven if a book is good enough in the right places and Pearl was just good enough when Pearl was its actual focus. But Pearl was not focused on enough, sadly, for me to like this book very much. (A book can also be forgiven if the intelligentsia has decided that writer is a worthy writer no matter what but best not to get too bogged down in details like that.) Read the rest of the review here: http://ireadoddbooks.com/ire/pearl-by...

[Carolyn Heinze]

I think it's un-PC to not like Gordon, but don't really understand what all the fuss is about. My edition had blatant errors (she got the location of Bloody Sunday wrong), and really, I wanted everyone-not just Pearl - to die in the end; a much more productive endeavour than being so bloody self-involved. Only reason I read all of it was to see if this wish would be fulfilled. Gordon's supposedly trademark narrative style is interesting, but with this story it just made me dislike her, too. Should probably try another one of her books, but I keep thinking that life is just too short.

[Mom · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're an Irish Catholic woman of a certain age, Mary Gordon will be your favorite author. The culture she describes is so familiar to me.This one concerns her young daughter, so you younger girls should enjoy this one. More often her tales are about maiden aunts, parish priests, etc. They ring true to me. Don't let that scare you off. She has other subjects too. Interesting aside....she teaches in the English department at Barnard College, NYC with Jennie Kassanoff, Kathleen's Harvard roommate. When we visited Jennie last summer, she talked about how great she was as an associate.

[Meredith · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to stop reading this book several times in the beginning. The constant narration is distracting and I found the storyline uninteresting. Another review had mentioned that the book would get better so I stuck with it. I would say that the middle of the book was good enough but I didn't enjoy the end either. It felt like the author just kept saying the same thing over and over again.

I don't think I would recommend this book based in how painful it felt to read it.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

The characters in this book are not particularly likeable but they are very definitely human. Their lives, thoughts and relationships are flawed just as all humans are. Pearl's thoughts about our human ability and inclination to do harm are thoughts worth thinking. I liked the book because it illustrated that there is no one answer or solution, that we all stumble along, coming to our answers in the stumbling.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was kind of a strange book. There was a narrator who acted like the ghost of Christmas present and past and commented sporadically throughout the book. There were a lot of musings about the Jewish faith and the Catholic faith. The story started off slow, but became very readable and interesting. Ultimately, I liked the book, but reading it was an unusual journey.

[Rand]

A deep and probing exploration of consciousness as examination of conscience. At times became too much weight to bear but ultimately rewarding.

A story of reconciliation that asserts that the personal and political match up one to one, that on the individual level each of us are our own most severe judge.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolutely amazing, unique, powerful transcendent novel. Difficult to summarize, off-putting in its plot, but, if you are able to stick it out, a novel that unfolds and transforms itself on multiple levels.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

The omniscent narrator annoyed me greatly. I probably wouldn't have finished this if it wasn't the only book I had with me on a recent flight.

[Pamk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy the very perceptive characterizations and exploration of the characters, but it was rather tedious to get through at times.

[Farida · Rating 2 out of 5]

More like 1.5 stars. This book was really really poorly written. The narration style, the plot line, the characters. This was a pain to read honestly and I’m quite proud of myself for finishing it. I guess that’s why I’d give it 2 stars cause it still managed to string me along enough to finish the book which is quite hard for me to do anyway. I did not care for any of the characters, all of them fell pretty flat to me. The story itself was quite strange and bizarre - like trying to explain to someone what this book is even about ??? The narration style and the way the author addresses the reader was very uncomfortable/cringe, like a very amateur style of writing. Although points for trying I guess. I can see what the writer was trying to achieve and the vision she had in her mind of connecting all of these characters and their histories and own stories to each other… but like I said, it all fell very flat, unfocused, and just plain boring.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a couple of chapters to get used to Gordon’s narrative style, but once I got used to it, I loved it. The intimate conversational style inviting me to make my own moral judgments, to contemplate questions that maybe I wouldn’t have asked, but the narrator wanted me to consider was enlightening, challenging, and gratifying. So, I’m reading this, and I’m loving it, and then Joseph proposes to Pearl. And it’s not that it was unexpected per se. Gordon builds up to the proposal in a way that makes a sort of jet-lagged, incoherent sense. It’s more that it was so absurd. Nothing about it made any sense, and this one muddled act brings the story to a screeching halt. Pearl and Maria are racing towards a cataclysmic confrontation that may clear the air and put their relationship on a more even keel. Adult-to-adult rather than parent-to-child, and then Joseph. And then whatever progress was being made is swept away, pushed back into the closet as Pearl has to cope with this unimaginable, unintelligible thing. And there’s no confrontation. Joseph does this thing and then he banishes himself back to Italy, casting himself out of the family and back into his birth role of servant. It’s devastating and foolish and bends the lens of the story from the line that I loved: Pearl going to Ireland and finding a cause worthy of her life, and what does it mean to give one’s life to something; what does it mean to give one’s life for something? The ending was just so weak and disappointing and nothing is resolved. I’m not sure I wanted the characters to change, but I certainly wanted their relationships to grow and evolve and mature. Instead they are arrested in their immaturity with no one, especially not Maria, seeing any new truth. Okay, I did want Maria to change. I did want her to be more aware of the world, her role in it, the character of her daughter, the nature of her privilege. And it was sorely disappointing that she is allowed to continue to exist in her own self-absorption.

[Kit · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some philosophical thoughts about life and death that I appreciated, but they didn't need to be repeated as much as they were. I felt like Gordon was saying: in case you didn't get it the first time around, let me repeat it for you and, in fact, perhaps I should offer a 3rd version rephrased. This book could have been edited down.

For most of the book I didn't like Pearl all that much and couldn't appreciate what she was doing and her reasons why, although I did soften a little at the end.

[Tieno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mary Gordon plays with some interest themes of life, mistakes, regrets, and most prominently: guilt and forgiveness. Pearl explores some profound and beautiful themes and concepts regarding forgiveness and mistakes. However, the writing is just so unbelievably frustrating! It’s overly detailed and complicated. There’s a lot of subplots and sideline stories (side quests lol) that are completely irrelevant to the overall plot.

While the concepts were great, the execution and storytelling was chaotic and messy at best.