The Pearl Diver

by Jeff Talarigo

In 1948, a nineteen-year-old pearl diver's dreams of spending her life combing the waters of Japan’s Inland Sea are shattered when she discovers she has leprosy. By law, she is exiled to an island leprosarium, where she is stripped of her dignity and instructed to forget her past. Her name is erased from her family records, and she is forced to select a new one. To the two thousand patients on the island of Nagashima, she becomes Miss Fuji.

Although drugs arrest the course of Miss Fuji's disease, she cannot leave the colony. Instead, she becomes a caretaker to the other patients, and through the example of their courage, she gains insight into the deep wellspring of strength she will need to reclaim her freedom. Written with precision and eloquence, The Pearl Diver is a dazzling meditation on isolation and community, cruelty and compassion.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Japan, Book Club, Asia, Historical, Japanese Literature

237 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2005

About the author

Jeff Talarigo is the author of three novels and numerous short stories. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, he has received many honors, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award for his first novel “The Pearl Diver”, one of eleven novels on the 2009 Notable Books List by the American Library Association for his second novel “The Ginseng Hunter”, NPR’s 2008 “Under the Radar”, a 2005 Kiriyama Prize Notable Book, been featured on NPR’s “Weekend Edition” and awarded a fellowship at the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers in 2006-07. His work has been published in five languages. He lived in Japan for fifteen years and twice lived in the Gaza Strip, the setting for his third novel “In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees”.

Reviews

[John Winston · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a sad, but beautiful story. Jeff Talarigo's prose is formidable and his words economical; he tells this unique story with elegant efficiency. It felt so real at times, I felt like I was reading a true story. I yearn to know more about this sympathetic heroine, Ms. Fuji. Talarigo's words are perfect. This quote from the story says it all; "Words are the most important thing we have. A few words, one word, can change history." The last sentence in the epilogue made me shudder. Read this novel if you want to be moved.

[Licha · Rating 3 out of 5]

More like a 2.5 for me but I feel that the story contained within is one that needs to be told so it will receive three stars.

The story started off fine, but by the last 100 pages or so I was forcing myself to finish it (and this is a short book, a little over the 200 page mark). I wasn't too fond of the style of writing the author used for this. The book was choppy, written as segments based on artifacts collected on the island of Nagashima, which was a small island off the coast of Japan where people with leprosy were exiled to around the 1930's. Instead of the story focusing on Miss Fuji, the pearl diver of title, (I cannot remember if they ever mention her original name, but Miss Fuji is the name she is forced to choose after being exiled to the island in order to wipe all trace of her existence from any official records) we get to hear about other people on the island, if briefly. This makes it really hard to connect to any of the characters, including Miss Fuji. The story is too important and a sad one at that for it to get lost in this style of writing. It loses its impact and I for one never felt like I got any deep insight into what it was like to be in the skin of Miss Fuji.

[Todd Wittenmyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

The time 1948 in post-WW2 Japan. The story of a 19 year old girl who is sent to a leper colony. The disease never advances, but she is still forced to stay on the island of Nagashima. There she discovers the horrors and human suffering that the inhabitants of the leprosarium deal with on a daily basis. Freedom seems an impossibility! But there is always hope! I gave this one 4.5 stars! Cheers everyone!

[G.G. · Rating 4 out of 5]

The sad and shocking story of Japan's leprosariums, told in the form of a novel. The grimness is relieved by the author's convincing creation of heroine Miss Fuji, who loses everything except an essential, almost miraculously compassionate core. The author also shows how in careful hands, fiction can illuminate otherwise dark corners of history.

[Kexin · Rating 5 out of 5]

i almost never cry while reading books. i WEPT TWICE reading this. a haphazard and non-exhaustive list of things i liked in this, in no particular order:

- what a grounded and... thoroughly sympathetic snapshot of the lives of people in the leprosarium this is! the tone is calm and muted in general, conveying on one hand a deep abiding sense of resignation (in my amateur opinion) throughout the book but on the other hand the constant strength of the characters' modest steps towards finding dignity & building a better life
- in general, the attention to human suffering/despair but also to care, community, and quiet persistence in the face of said suffering and cruel circumstance
- everything about the story miss min tells halfway through about the son who leads his ageing mother up to the top of a mountain under pretence of a routine trip for praying or sightseeting during autumn (if i recall correctly) to abandon her there, because he and his wife have decided they can no longer take care of her. this was the point at which i CRIED because of... the quiet horror of this moment but also the tremendous sadness on both parties' ends underlying it! everyone is humanised with care. the son is clearly reluctant. in the text you get a look into the son's thought process too, and there are lines that go something like, he refused to look back at her because he knew that if he did it would be impossible to go through with it, and he turns and walks away from her forever...
- the story, of course, also seems like a heartbreaking echo of the moment ms fuji's entire family abandons her near the start of the book (her sister meets her in person once after she's admitted to the leprosarium to unceremoniously tell her something like 'you are no longer my sister' i believe), the moment that begins her search for other forms of community that will sustain her since her own family has failed her
- the fact that ms fuji spends something like 48 years confined to the leprosarium. it's gutting because the book is not that long so at the start the text states she's 19 and that'll probably still be fresh in your mind as you read along, and then SUDDENLY the narrator reminds you towards the end that she's now in her sixties, with her years and potential squandered from her because of prejudice in the blink of an eye within textual space...
- i drew some connections while reading this to prison abolitionist thought and literature, because: 48 years is a long, long time to be imprisoned, and the way the patients at the leprosarium are treated is absolutely inhuman
- ms fuji tries, at the end, to revisit her pearl diving days from her youth and pre-leprosarium days, but she never manages to because the foundations of pearl diving as an art and/or respected skill have been shattered by the time the modern era has come around -- when she revisits a historic pearl diving place/community (?) it's been replaced by tourist attractions that promulgate a palatable, glossy fascimile of pearl diving that has been so far removed from the actual act of pearl diving itself that... it seems totally laughable and a little pathetic to ms fuji as she reflects on what she's lost
- i mean: it's a moment that seems to underscore how she's going to be disconnected forever from the art and skill that she valued and which defined a halcyon period in her life, because she will never be able to return to what it was before... and it's heartbreaking!! because -- can you imagine being severed from a profession that you have worked hard to excel at, that has been so wholly THE defining pride and language of your life, because of forces beyond your control?
- but then, the response to that: looking forward, ms fuji leaving tokyo to return to the leprosarium she was eager to get away from, which seems at first like a tragic aesop about the institutionalised patient who has been imprisoned so long that they no longer know how to live and integrate themselves into normal society... or that the possibility of that has been structurally effaced for them... but i suppose there was also something hopeful in it in this book, in that it's a conscious, agentic choice she makes to reclaim the one form of community she can still rely on and know will definitely have her back, which is among the other sufferers of leprosy and nurses who care for them
- the last line in the epilogue, oh my fucking god
- what a great encapsulation and subversion of the usual tropes of legacy you'll find in books: ms fuji's legacy does not lie in her blood-and-flesh family, who has all but callously forsaken her, but in the life of someone completely unconnected to her along those excessively narrow lines of blood and soil, whom she has touched with her care and kindness
- and of course, the fact that ms fuji has played a caretaker role, listening and bearing witness to other patients' pains throughout the book, whereupon in the epilogue she now... gets to relax a little and be the one taken care of instead, by the nurse who met ms fuji as a young girl and was shown warmth and friendliness by her

[Marisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminiscent of Moloka’i, this novel is about a young girl who grows up on a leprosy colony. Jeff Talarigo is a poetic writer, and his style only enhances the literary value of the novel instead of hindering it. Miss Fuji is a wonderful protagonist who’s easy to root for, and her emotions as a human being are relatable on every page. One thing I especially love about this novel was the use of artifacts and how they’re incorporated as a way to tell the story. As a historian who works with artifact preservation and does educational programs for kids on how artifacts tell stories, this added little bonus was the perfect way of showing how objects really do tell stories in ways that sometimes words can’t.

Overall, wonderful novel. Quick read, beautifully written, and authentic. Highly recommend!

[Missy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I normally don't read historical fiction. I loved the cover of The Pearl Diver, so I decided to give it a try...I am so glad that I did!
The story takes place in Japan and starts out in the year 1938. You are introduced to the world of pearl diving...and a 19 year old girl who is just starting to get comfortable with pearl diving and with her co-divers. She is suddenly taken ill with leprosy, and shunned by her family and friends. She makes the journey to the island of Nagashima, where all of the others with leprosy must stay. The sick are treated with medications...some are helped...most are not. They must come up with new names for themselves, for now that they are sick, they do not have a past. It doesn't exist. "Miss Fuji" as she is now known, does not have the disease as badly as some others. She ministers to the sick, and becomes a nurse. She spends all of her hours taking care of others. She has little time to herself and when she does, she spends it exploring the island across from Nagashima, that she can get to on foot when the tide is low. It becomes a magical place for her, a place that she can escape to when she wants to be alone.
This is a historical read full of emotion...I learned so much about leprosy that I didn't know before.
I highly recommend this book...especially if you like historical fiction and Japanese history.

[Mónica Serrato · Rating 3 out of 5]

NOVELA FICCIÓN HISTÓRICA
Ambientada en Japón en la década de los 50 y transcurre a lo largo de los años
Nos cuenta la historia de esta buscadora de perlas cuando le llega la enfermedad de la lepra, como es tratada cuando se me diagnostica y como vive a lo largo de los años
Ha sido una historia muy dura porque los enfermos eran despojados de todo lo que tenían, incluso de su nombre y familia, tratados como si hubieran fallecido, y custodiados en la isla de Nagashima hasta el final de sus días
Me ha parecido interesante como mezcla las reflexiones de la protagonista con los edictos gubernamentales y reuniones del consejo siempre en torno a la enfermedad
No me ha gustado mucho que se cuenta en tercera persona, creo que si estuviera en primera persona hubiese empatizado más. Tampoco me ha gustado los saltos temporales que hacían que me perdiera del hilo

SINOPSIS
En Japón, en 1948, una joven de diecinueve años se adentra en las aguas cada día a buscar perlas. Hasta que descubre que ha contraído la leptra, en esos tiempos una enfermedad todavía sin tratamiento claro y que condena a sus víctimas a vivir aislados y en condiciones infrahumanas. Sin embargo, esta muchacha, en ese mundo de deshonrados, protagoniza una fábula de dignidad y valentía.

[Rebecca Wedholm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved it so much! The writing style is really beautiful and it kept my attention. I like the little spurts of paragraphs based on the “artifact” and I loved how whatever happened in the paragraph was related to it. You can sort of feel suspense building throughout the whole book. I thought the ending was really beautiful as well

[Dawnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful book and story

It really shows not in,y the strength that people can have through out horrible situations but also how completely horrible and mean people can be especially to those that did nothing to deserve it.

This is a historical fiction in a way, but at the same time it doesn't not read like one nor really has the typical historical aspects. To me it seem more like a biography or historical view into a specific time and place.

This is not the easiest story to read. Mostly because the people that have gotten sick are threaten very badly and as if they somehow are responsible for getting sick, as if they wanted to get sick.

One of the most heartbreaking moments to me in this book is always the moment when one of the patients as another patient why she is not praying, since she should have so one to pray to about how shameful and horrible she was to and for her family for getting sick. And the other patient just answers that she has nothing to feel shame about, she did not want to get sick. And the first patient just looks that the woman as if she never even thought about something like that. That there is no shame to feel for being sick, since nobody ever wishes to get sick.

The book also has many wonderful moments, of patients helping patients, trying to make the horrible situation better. Or just finding little moments that make it more bearable.

I also love the Japanese influences that can be felt throughout the entire book and don't get lost at any point thought the story.

This is just beautiful and everyone should read it. I do not understand why this book is not more loved and raved about.

Go on, read it, love it and then come back to talk to me about it how much you loved the story about the woman whose actual name we never even learn.

[Alana · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars... The writing didn't appeal to me, but the content was compelling.

The Pearl Diver is a historical fiction about a 19 year old woman who contracts leprosy. She spends the greater part of her life in a leprasorium on an island. The book describes the progression of the disease as well as the social stigma.

I really wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. I felt disconnected from Miss Fuji although she is the protagonist. The last 100 pages were especially difficult to read. I found myself skimming just to finish.

[Marji Morris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure why I picked this book up, but I'm glad I did. It's told through a first person narrator, letting us see into life in Japan and in a leprosarium. Miss Fuji, the main character, deals matter-of-factly with her disease and the conditions on the island to which she's been exiled. The calm tone only increases the horror of the way the patients are treated. The book was well-written and worth reading.

[Ellen Notbohm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not since Tess of the D'urbervilles has a book haunted me with such unspeakable sadness, compelling beauty, and layered depth. It will stay with me.

[Paula W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Imagine you are 19 years old and have just completed your career training. You are starting out your real adult life with your new adult job. You contract an illness and are completely shunned by society (including family and friends), forced to quit your job, forced to change your name, and shipped off to live on a remote island with others who suffer the same fate. Life as you knew it is over, as well as the future you hoped for and the plans you made. In this book, her new name is Miss Fuji and her great sin is contracting leprosy while working as a pearl diver.

I’m not gonna lie. This was a difficult read. The writing is fine, beautiful even in some parts. But the treatment of Miss Fuji and others is so cruel and isolating and dehumanizing. Small acts of everyday kindness become grand gestures worthy of emotional breakdown. The resulting lack of self worth experienced by the main character and her slow crawl back to acceptance and peace took a toll on me. It’s a story worth telling, though. I’m glad I read it.

[Chris Campion · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written novel about isolation and rebirth, set in an almost dreamlike milieu. It's also a story about humanity yearning for dignity and respect, regardless of what perceived hopelessness it may find itself thrown into or what odds it's stacked up against.

Talarigo's writing is eloquent and poetic, but not pretentious. His style is subtle and it makes you really focus in on each sentence. Dialog is short but meaningful. Talarigo is a very good writer who probably deserves a bit more recognition. I've also read The Ginseng Hunter which is very good too.

[Pheagan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fair warning– the author of this book is my coworker, Jeff Telarigo. We teach at the same school. I had been meaning to read his books for a while, but it wasn’t until I had a flight that I picked it up for a bit of plane reading. I was hoping I would at least enjoy it enough not to have to withhold my opinion from him, but it far, far, far exceeded my expectations. I finished before we landed and wouldn’t talk to my boyfriend the whole time. I also cried in an airport restaurant on the layover. Embarrassing.

The Pearl Diver is the story of a young Japanese pearl diver who is diagnosed with leprosy. She is sent to a leper’s colony just before a cure was found. Even though there is a cure and the state of her disease (which is mild) is arrested, and even though leper colonies rapidly began to disappear from the world, Japan’s leper colonies and policy of absolute quarantine have lasted into the millennium. There are still people in Nagashima today, mostly because it is impossible to reintegrate them into society. I know from talking to Jeff that he spent quite a bit of time at Nagashima researching the book with his son. The structure of the book is based on a museum one of the lepers was constructing at the time– each museum artifact tells a story. Jeff lived in Japan for a number of years, married a Japanese woman, and speaks the language, so the setting and culture is accurate– at least according to the Japanese students at our school who have read it. Almost everything in the book is true with the exception of the protagonist, through whose eyes we see the story unfold.

Upon entry to the Nagashima island leprosy camp, the Pearl Diver loses her name and chooses a new one- Miss Fuji, a name she chooses based on a fond memory of a trip to the mountain with her uncle. She endures the eradication of her life and adjusts to life on the colony, becoming a caretaker of those whose condition had deteriorated well before the treatment was introduced. The secondary characters are drawn with minimal but meaningful strokes. The colony can’t erase who the lepers were before they came to the island, and their attempts to create a meaningful life on the island is the joy and tragedy of this book. No one is made a saint, however. Personalities are bruised and distorted. No one is who they would have been if they’d had a chance at a normal life. There is hope and there is courage, but there is also bitterness and failure and retreat. The prose is minimal but poetic, and I for one found it impossible to put the book down until I finished it. As bittersweet as the story is, it ends on a very sweet note.

I highly recommend this book. Also, he’ll be publishing a book based on his time in Palestine, so keep an eye out for that.

[Tawny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Author: Jeff Talarigo
Title: The Pearl Diver
Genre: Historical fiction
Publication Info: DoubleDay. New York. 2004.
Recommended Age: 14 and up

Plot Summary: A 19-year-old Japanese girl who dives for pearls to help her family with the cost of living is diagnosed with leprosy. It is 1948, and she knows that she will be cast out of society if she is found with such a disease. She hides out in a shed by the water for a couple of days, but the local authorities find her and row her to an island leprosarium on Nagashima. She is ordered to give herself a new name and forget her previous identity. She decides on Miss Fuji, naming herself after the mountain she grew up loving. No one from her family comes to visit, and her name is taken off the family register. Although the Japanese people probably understood that it was not her fault for getting sick, they still considered her contagious and unclean. Those who ran the leprosarium were cruel and felt no sympathy for the patients receiving trial medications for their disease. Although Miss Fuji loved the water and sometimes snuck out at night to swim, it was forbidden for any lepers to be in the water in case it carried the disease to others. Miss Fuji is forced to work on the island as a nurse for other sicker patients. She is required to help the island doctors perform late-term abortions, which make her sick and break her heart. Miss Fuji hangs on to the hope that she can be healed and return to a normal lifestyle. A symbol of that hope is two children who frequently come to play on a beach within sight of the island. Miss Fuji always waves to them when she sees them. She gets a few chances to go back to the city at night, but it is not the same to her.

Personal Notes: The subject matter in this novel is a little deep, but it is written very clearly. I would seriously consider reading this book as a class because of some very unique elements. The novel is divided into three sections, in which the first reveals the story through artifacts from Nagashima. The book also contains lines from medical records and stunning poetry. It would be neat to show a class what types of stories you can tell through fragments like that.

Evaluation: Talarigo created a beautiful, unique novel by drawing from actual medical history, a perspective not often represented. I think older adolescents would really appreciate it, especially because it is similar in many ways to novels written about the concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Other Comments: This novel explains a lot of Japanese culture, especially having to do with religion, which I also haven’t found to be a common element in young adult novels.

[N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

People like to blame misfortune on its victims. When a sore on a young pearl diver’s arm is diagnosed as leprosy, she is chased down, declared dead, and confined to a small island populated by thousands of other patients. She stays there the rest of her life.

Miss Fuji, the pearl diver, meets her life’s trials –estrangement from her family, conflict with island administrators, personal doubt- with resignation. The treatment for the physical symptoms of her disease is available from the first months of her stay at the Nagashima leprosarium, but her society’s stigma against lepers cannot be treated by pill or injection and even being cured opens no doors back to mainland society for her. Although parts of her body remain dead to sensation, Miss Fuji feels stigma keenly, and the reader is kept hoping that time will find a cure for that, too.

In this gentle book, Talarigo describes prejudice, disappointment, and human frailty honestly, but his depiction is softened by the acceptance that changes in social attitude do not arrive quickly. There is little dialogue, but the reader won’t miss it: it’s almost unnecessary because Talarigo writes silence so well. This is a thoughtful literary exploration of the treatment of lepers in Japanese society.

[Ginger Marcinkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I have read many books that have such layers in a rich and haunting character of Miss Fuji. The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo captivated me. The author created a tender and moving story of a young woman exiled and abandoned because of leprosy. He combined the deep texture of a captivating character and a strong sense of place to evoke a deep emotional response from the reader, forcing them to experience both anger and compassion at Miss Fuji's situation. This reader sensed the author's respect for the people of Japan and praises his ability to convey such tenderness and tradition in the midst of such atrocities. This is a timeless read whose main character will not soon leave the reader's mind. Shame on me for not posting this review when I first read it in 2011. It is a beautiful book.

[Andi · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the story of a 19-year old girl. She is a pearl diver in Japan. She develops leprosy and is cast out from her family, her job, and her future to an island with other lepers.

I learned a great deal about leprosy that I did not know. This book also made me think about how fear controls our actions. It made me grateful for my simple life and the freedoms I take for granted every day.

My only criticism of the book is the author's use of "Artifacts" to propel the story line. I wish he just told the story...

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but very sad story about a 19 year old Japanese girl (who happens to be a pearl diver) that contracts leprosy and is forcibly removed from her home to the "leprosarium" on the island of Nagashima. The 240 pages just didn't develop the characters enough for me although the drama of the story was really the leprosy itself and how cruelly people were treated that were afflicted with Hansen's disease before a cure came along.

[Madlen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book made me feel some things.
Tragic, beautiful and touching.

[Elizabeth Beson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a really good book, was definitely not what I was expecting. It followed one woman's whole life in Japan as someone with leprosy, very eye opening to Japanese culture and also how lepers were viewed across the world, how things changed once medicine for leprosy was discovered, and how life did and didn't change for people already isolated because of their leprosy. Very interesting read overall, would recommend but wasn't the biggest thriller, it's a rather slow read but was still enjoyable.

[Carlena · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd put trigger warning on this book. There were ALOT of very heartbreaking and graphic parts in this book. I liked the book. I cried a bit. Very sad. It is a good representation of how the world views people with diseases. I liked how they showed the progression of medication, and science during the time. It was however very sad, graphic, and heartbreaking.

[Claudia Zeien · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it was interesting to learn about how leprosy patients in Japan were treated, I did not feel engaged with the characters. I also found the writing style disjointed.

[Jen aka jazzee2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

During a wintery camping trip, this book has finally come off of the pile to be read. Having so many books and so little time, I have seriously been considering skimming off the ones I didn't think I would get round to reading, and had I not been in the middle of a field in a blizzard this is likely to have been one of them. I am sooo pleased it wasn't.

This is definitely one of those books where the cover belies the beauty within. Jeff Talarigo - who I had not heard of previously - has such a way with words, I was reminded of Ha Jin and Pearl S Buck. Maybe his time spent living in Asian cultures has given him an understanding of the way of thinking, rhythm and life that I think is so special and quite unique in describing things so simply yet so evocatively. It really is pure poetry.

I had no idea what the book was about, never mind the historical reality. It has certainly spurred me on to finding out how much of it is true: even as I was reading it, I knew that some of the horrors described could only be based on fact, which is the case.

I loved journeying with 'Miss Fuji' through the ocean and then through the passage of her life, seeing her experiences through equally naive eyes. I loved the interaction between the patients, and also the staff. I really loved seeing the progression of time, and the parallel between going from a more draconian to a more enlightened time, seeing also that things which should be a given - respect for nature and the environment - suffer in the face of enlightenment. Which naturally begs the question: is it truly any better than it was before, or have we lost the beauty of a simple life?

I saw in another review someone had described it as the saddest book they had ever read. In spite of everything, I don't see it as sad: I see it as a triumph of human nature, spirit, of tenacity and compassion. I see it as a celebration of nature and nurture, a story which must be told not only to remember the past but also to preserve and respect the future.

It turns out this book was a prize winner (2005 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Foundation Award; also named a 2005 Kiriyama Prize Notable Book), and deservedly so. Chances are it should have had more attention, however I must say that some of the phrasing/grammar was a little clumsy at times (although I was reading a proof copy, so this may well have been ironed out before print). A great read none-the-less.

If you like this, others I would recommend are The Good Earth by Pearl S Buck (one of my all time favourite books) and Waiting by Ha Jin.

I would probably give it 4.5 stars, but as we can't do that on here I'll plump on the side of 5 stars.

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a soulful novel of acceptance and denial, written in an etherial tone that has the resonance of free form poetry. The story is permeated with a sense of melancholia, but rendered with persistent dignity. It follows the life of a young Japanese woman diagnosed with leprosy at age 19, and who is exiled to live on an island leper colony with a new identity and new name, Miss Fuji.

Soon after her arrival to the leprosarium (post WWII) modern medicines became available that stop the progress of the disease, and it becomes established knowledge that the disease is not contagious when controlled. But change to social acceptance is slow. Injections that keep the symptoms at bay do not impact the perceptions of those who live outside their community where the stigma of the disease continues.

The pathos contained in this story touches the reader’s soul partly due of descriptions of cruelty, often casual, inflicted on the patients with leprosy. There are several explicit description of involuntary abortions, one as late as 7 months, imposed on female patients. The jarring impact of the several horrific scenes described within the book leads, in the end, to a sense of a life’s battles well endured.

Over the life time of Miss Fuji the leper colony gradually depopulates as old patients die off and the inflow of new patients ceased. Progress toward elimination of the disease, of course, is a good thing. But the passing of an era and the ending of a community is also sad.

As the story nears its end we learn that the leper colony is a metaphor of real life outside the colony. When Miss Fuji explores the world outside the colony she discovers that there are others ostracized by society.

In the Epilogue we learn of an example of blessings returning as described in the saying, "Cast your bread upon the waters." (Ref. Ecclesiastes 11:1)
_______________
The following is a description of this book from the 2012 PageADay's Book Lover's Calendar:
FIRST-RATE FICTION
This novel about a young Japanese pearl diver in the 1940s is rendered with precision and depth. Diagnosed with leprosy and banished to an island leper colony, “Miss Fuji” (inmates must take on new identities) lives out a life filled with loneliness, shame, and neglect. Somehow, in her endurance, she maintains her dignity, becoming a caretaker for the other patients. Colum McCann raves, “One of the most honest, tender, and inventive books I’ve read in years.”
THE PEARL DIVER , by Jeff Talarigo (Anchor, 2005)

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story is of a young woman, nineteen years of age, who is a pearl diver. Even this aspect of the story I found fascinating; the author describes very well the lifestyle of a pearl diver in the days when it was still done without special equipement. Even in the 40's, which is when this book begins, pearls were harvested in much the same way they must have been for centuries. The girl learns that she has leprosy, and the rest of the book is set in a leprosorium on an island, which has no conctact with the world outside. [return][return]I enjoyed the author's writing style, and the way the book is set into sections by artifacts. The story line is laid out by each of these items, and even when years and years of time are skipped, the life of the colony is highlighted well. The horrors of the disease are illuminated with out being dwelt on; as are the deprivation, and inhumane treatments of the patients. [return][return]This book is set in Japan, but I assume the life of the leper would be the same pretty much wherever you were. The shunning, the misunderstanding of the disease, the fear. Even when scientific studies, and new medication, would have made it possible for many of the leper's to be reintroduced into society, society was not ready, and according to this book, many of the patients were not able to readjust to life in 'the world' again. [return][return]Would reccomend this book without hesitation; though because of the subject matter, and some of the gruesome details - including: abortions, and late stage abortions preformed on the unwilling; suicide; sexual references; death and disease - give it a mature rating. [return][return]Quote from the book:[return]Spoken by the character, Mr. Shikagawa, page 150: "Words are the most important thing we have. A few words, one word, can change history. Imagine the correct words had been spoken by those people who are in charge of our lives. A few well-thought-out words and things might have been different. Unfortunatly they have chosen all the wrong words."

[zespri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful little book, and I loved it. The story begins with a young pearl diver in Japan in the 1940's, she loves the diving, the sea and everything about her chosen career. But it is all stripped from her when she discovers she has leprosy, and she is taken from all that she knows and loves and is put into isolation on an island for leprosy patients. She is told to forget her past life, it is now dead to her, and her life begins the day she sets foot in the leprosarium.

Though physically her leprosy is arrested with a new drug, the emotional torment is far worse, and it would be a hard heart that is not touched by the plight of these early leprosy patients.

Redemption comes as she watches the strength of character of some of the other patients, people she would probably never have encountered in her life as a pearl diver.

[Stevelee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second book I have read by Jeff Talarigo, the first was The Ginseng Hunter, which took place along the Sino-North Korean border. The Pearl Diver, like The Ginseng Hunter, was written with a clarity of language that is one of the trademarks, in my mind, of a talented writer. Both books address dark subjects, the Ginseng Hunter’s focus on the bleakness of life in North Korea and rural China, and the Pearl Diver, dealing with a young woman’s banishment in post-war Japan to a leprosarium. Either book will make for fine, thought-provoking reading, but I think of the two, I would recommend The Pearl Diver to reading groups interested in a multi-faceted discussion.