Customer Reviews

Pearl: A Novel

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The plot of Mary Gordon's new book "Pearl" is eerily familiar. Like Carol Shields' "Unless" a mother's daughter is immolating herself. "Pearl" is in Dublin chained to a flagpole at the American embassy. And there you have the entire plot. Mary Gordon explores three characters, the mother, the daughter and the uncle-like figure who has been visiting in Rome when he finds out about Pearl's intended sacrifice.
This book is really an extended development of the main characters, their lives, their loves, their fears. I realized about half way through the book that I was still finding out about each of the characters and I was being gently surprised with each discovery. Resonances of Irish fatalism, sacrifice and Catholicism, faith and Judaism sound throughout the book.
However, this is not a religious book, it is a human book. I have read each book of Mary Gordon's and this is by far her most mature and deepest work.

Honore de Balzac wrote, "A mother who is really a mother is never free." It is true that the maternal bond may be one of the strongest forces in the universe. A mother's heart is always with her child, even when --- or perhaps especially when --- that child is far away. And a grown child is no exception. So what happens in a mother's heart and mind when she learns that her child is far away and in danger? What if the danger is self-inflicted?

These questions take center stage in Mary Gordon's latest novel, PEARL. Single mother Maria Meyers is celebrating a quiet Christmas in New York when she finds out that her twenty-year-old daughter Pearl, who is attending school in Ireland, has chained herself to the American Embassy in Dublin and has not eaten for six weeks. Pearl has written a statement saying that her death by starvation is meant to mark the death of a young man who recently has been killed. Even more than that, Pearl's actions are meant to witness the "will to harm" she finds in humanity.

Maria is unaware of Pearl's connection to the boy and is confused and saddened to learn that Pearl feels in some way responsible for his death. She feels helpless and alone knowing that her daughter is so far away and in so much pain. On the flight to Dublin, Maria tries to remain calm but is struggling to keep her feelings in check as she rushes to rescue Pearl. Also making the painful journey to help Pearl is Joseph Kasperman, who Maria grew up with and who Pearl has trusted and loved all her life. As the two travel to Dublin, readers learn all about their complicated relationship, Pearl's childhood, and the events that drove her to desperate measures.

Gordon's prose is amazing; heartfelt and honest but not sappy, and emotional without being overwrought. There are so many themes present in the book: family relationships, the struggle for political and civil freedom, individual responsibility, and the question of human nature. Still, the story is never muddled; Gordon does a commendable job of keeping the plot crisp, the characters true and believable, and the reader interested. It is only with Joseph's thread of the story that the novel drags ever so slightly.

Pearl's suicide attempt is about politics but it is mostly about witnessing --- not just the life and death of one individual who has died senselessly, but also the lives and deaths of so many who have, and do, all the time. It is also about Pearl trying to find a voice and identity in what feels to her like a chaotic and troubled world. Because she doesn't think that her voice is loud enough or strong enough to make a difference, she believes that her body will make a bigger statement.

Her act of sacrifice forces Maria and Joseph to assess their lives and their relationship to each other and to Pearl as they reach out to try and save her from a burden they do not understand.

Maria is a fierce character; she's protective of her daughter yet blind to her daughter's real needs. In her Gordon has created an interesting, not always likeable but quite understandable, character. Pearl is very compelling and Gordon writes her story with sympathy, thoughtfulness and wisdom. Gordon's narrative style is quite unique --- an omniscient and personal, unnamed narrator who shares with readers a concern for the characters.

In the end, neither Pearl, who had wanted to be, nor Maria, who had hoped never to be, are free from each other and their complicated, realistically portrayed relationship. The final chapter, almost hidden in the hardback edition, finds them together, trying to heal and understand each other. Gordon writes, "We will hope for the best."

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

My feelings about the novel vary. There are aspects of it that I truly enjoyed, and aspects that I found weighty or hmmm... slow.
"Slow" is a death-knell of a word, in book reviews, so I want to qualify my use of the word here, because truly, Pearl is a book well worth reading, but one should maybe know a few things ahead of time.
Like, for instance, that the first few pages are a bit misleadingly promising.
By that I mean that they contain more real action in them than is to be found in the next 200! Admittedly, the book [I think] really gets the reader involved in its end pages, but these parenthetical highpoints bracket an immense amount of musings upon family, religion, and politics. A lot of nostalgic montage. Stuff that may call for toothpicks to hold open the eyes of some readers.
Secondly, the author has employed an all-knowing [God-like], yet totally unknown [to the reader] in the final analysis, narrator. In some ways it seems disappointing that we are never really shown who is telling the story. At one point, the narrator pops out from behind his or her curtain, and says, "Think of me this way: midwife, present at the birth. Or perhaps this: godfather, present at the christening."
Well... I don't know. I think I would like to know which it is!
Maybe for some, this would be OK. But for me, I found myself unduly preoccupied with wanting to know who this narrator is.
Deconstructionist DeconSHMUCKtionist!
But thirdly, and positively now, I am a reader that enjoys good [detailed, onion-peeling] character development, and I think we have that here, in this book.

Here's the gist of the story itself.
A New York Christmas night [not dark and stormy, that we know of...] the year, 1998. Maria Meyers returns from a party to find a phone message from the State Department, advising her to contact them. She learns that her 20 year old daughter Pearl, studying language at a university in Ireland, has brought herself to the brink of death by starvation and then chained herself to the flagpole of the U.S. Embassy. Motive currently unknown.
Maria is appropriately horrified. This is out of character for Pearl. A mother's worst news! "She packs her bag." [p.9].
Then 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 Dublin from their separate locations.
"Do you think she'll die?" Maria asks.
"No, I don't think she will die," he says. "You won't let her."

The thing is, Maria herself is someone who is well-acquainted with protest, with activism. Sort of a flower-child of the `60's, she marched and demonstrated and ranted as did so many others of that generation, in the turbulent days of Vietnam, Kent State, and the assassination of JFK.
Now her own daughter is staging this protest... willing to lay down her life in a cause that Maria does not understand.
The bulk of the book explores why Pearl is doing what she is doing... and we learn along with Maria [actually, long before Maria, thanks to our narrator who is way ahead of the airplanes] the cause of Pearl's angst with life. She is sacrificing her life to "bear witness" to the death of a young boy, an event for which she feels partially responsible, as well as to make a political statement for the peace process in Ireland.
Martyrs, hunger-strikers, suicide bombers, terrorists. These deliberate self-orchestrations of death are something we are all familiar with. Like, if you own a TV, you are familiar with it. And so the novel raises [I think] a lot of important issues, and asks profound questions of its readers, and of its characters.
Is there anything truly worth dying for?
Is there anything worth living for?
Is it always desirable to live?
The strength of this novel [for me] is found in the portrayal of the changes wrought within Maria, Joseph and Pearl as they grapple with these universal questions. At one point, it is put this way: "Why is it that it's life we want?" [p.341].
I found it compelling. Rich in its philosophical musings. I will always choose this, if the option is the BANG-SMASH-POW of pointless plot. I guess it's my inner-Dostoyevsky, coming up for air!
Mary Gordon is successful at making me believe that for some people, the conclusion "Life is worth living" is not easily arrived at!

Recommended by Bookpuddle with a rating of 3 puddles out of a possible 5, and with the proviso that you remember that I am Dostoyevsky reincarnate!

When I read the reviews on line, I was amazed at the range, from 1 star to 5. I feel those that gave this wonderful, engrossing novel only 1 star just didn't get it. Mary Gordon, I believe, is not trying to tell a universal tale, although horrors occur all over the world. What she has written is a deeply personal, heartfelt novel of three people whose lives are intertwined against the background of the political situation in Ireland. Her exquisite writing and precisely drawn characters hook you from the first page. Kudos to Mary Gordon!

"Why do we choose to live?", Pearl asks her mother, Maria. Pearl asks this question as she is lying in a hospital bed in Belfast after starving herself for six weeks and chaining herself to a flag pole. Maria thinks and says "Because it seems we are meant to."

Mary Gordon has written a powerful novel asking the questions we sometimes think about. What is life about and why am I here? The story centers around Pearl. A young woman, graduate of Radcliffe who goes to Belfast to study the Irish language. Pearl is the daughter of Maria, a very successful business woman who is loved by her employers. But, a woman who lives alone and has not been successful with relationships in her life. There is Joseph, the man she was brought up with. Maria's mother died when she was very young and her bereaved father brought Joseph's mother into their lives to care for their home. And, she brought her son Joseph. Joseph and Maria feel a bond of brother-sister love and nothing more. Pearl's father died as a young man, and Maria has been alone since that time.

In Belfast, Pearl feels at loose ends. She goes to college, but doesn't really get to know anyone. She meets a young man Finbar at a college pub. Finbar is working with the Irish Republican Army to bring peace to Ireland. He is a rebel. He also studies the Irish language, but his real interest is in freeing Ireland of her English landlords. Pearl is caught up in this quest and becomes involved with "the Troubles". At some point she becomes involved with Mick, an older American who has a young son he left in Ireland. An accident occurs and Pearl holds herself responsible. She feels guilt and that she must pay for this responsibility. She starves herself, and we find her chained to a flagpole at the American Embassy in Belfast. Two notes explain that she is here to die in the memory of Stephen Donegan. Pearl is saved by wonderful physician who becomes her psychiatrist. A woman who tries to save the young who do not want to live any longer. Pearl, at first refuses to see her mother. She wants to die, and she knows her mother will convince her to live. Joseph comes from Rome to be with Maria and somewhere there is a breakthrough for Pearl, her mother, Joseph and the doctor.

This is a novel that explores the role of beauty and art, religion, political action and the relationship of mother and daughter. A beautiful novel that gets to the soul of each of us. This is a novel for all of us to relish and savor. And Pearl asks that question we find difficult to answer; why in a world of sorrow and injustice, should we choose to live? How would you answer? Highly recommended prisrob

On a cold Christmas night in 1998 Maria Meyers is returning home to her apartment in New York, when she discovers a message left on her answering machine. She hopes it is a call from Pearl, her 20-year-old daughter, who is studying the Irish language at Trinity College in Dublin during her college year abroad.

With a strange mixture of anticipation and dread she listens and discovers that the message is from an officer from the State Department in Washington. The voice tells her that Pearl has chained herself to a flagpole in front of the American Embassy in Dublin. She has not eaten in six weeks; refuses all offers of assistance, and seemingly might die.

This premise sets the scene for a deep and intense psychological study of three main characters: Pearl, Maria and Joseph, Maria's best friend and confidant, and the man who must come to Pearl's rescue. Discarding the traditional linear narrative, author Mary Gordon instead, infuses her story with a challenging and often obtuse stream-of-consciousness style.

As the narrative gradually unfolds, the reader is witness to the interior lives of the story's three main protagonists whom are gradually forced to confront their inner most presumptions about love and life. Gordon also bombards readers constantly with her own questions and ruminations, and permeates the narrative with her own thoughts on the events as they transpire. She is telling us that her aim is to write a "chronicle" of three very different lives.

Pearl has inadvertently become involved with a misfit group who are sympathetic to the IRA. The republicans and the unionists are on the verge of signing an historical peace agreement, but certain members of Pearl's circle feel that they have been let down. When Pearl unwittingly causes the death of fifteen-year-old Stevie Donegan, the nephew of an IRA bomber serving time in an English jail, she assumes full responsibility and her guilt-ridden conscience leads her to this methodical imitation of Catholic martyrdom on the front steps of the Embassy.

It doesn't help that Stevie's father, Mick, an American sympathetic to the Irish cause, and Breeda, an Irishwoman from the North who has witnessed a lifetime of slaughter and carnage, obliquely blames her for Stevie's death. Maria, however, while horrified at what she's done, is quite sympathetic to her daughter's plight, and she realizes that Pearl had probably learnt by example.

Maria was a quasi-flower child and civil rights activist of the 60's. Empowered by an unjust war, Maria spent most of her formative years going to demonstrations and protests. But this is different, because Pearl has got herself caught up in someone else's cause in someone else's country. Pearl believes that her death will have some kind of strange transformative effect; she rationalizes that her suicide will be altered into an act of hope. It is her death, not her life, that promises to give her life meaning.

The other important character is Pearl's repressed childhood friend Joseph, who is also beckoned to Dublin when he hears the news. All his life Maria has treated him like a servant, but "there is no name for what he is to Pearl." What Pearl had done was divide his life inexorably. He was not the man he was yesterday. "His past had no importance to him, and the future is something he dares not contemplate."

There's no doubt Pearl is an ambitious novel, and it brims with issues of timeless universality: For what cause should one give up one's life? And is there anything truly worth dying for? Death, religion, political activism, and the irrefutable bond that exists between a mother and her daughter, are all themes that are addressed.

But in the end, these noble thematic aspirations get in the way, and Pearl begins to become repetitive, over-wrought and not that terribly engrossing. The endless interior monologues eventually become exhausting, and, at times, the novel seems to read more like a rhetorical college essay, than as a complete and fully-fledged work of fiction. This is a pity, because Mary Gordon is a highly accomplished, lyrical, and prosaic writer; it's just that she tends to let her own intellectual self-importance get in the way of good storytelling. Mike Leonard April 05.

This book turned out not at all what I expected. After reading the first 20 pages or so, I assumed it was simply a tale of a mother rescuing her daughter. It is that but not what I thought.

What I found enjoyable and unique about the writing style is that the story is told from all points of time and person. Though this could be confusing, the author does an excellent job of maintaining pace and direction when switching from narration to dialogue. The narrator is never revealed although the story unfolds as a re-telling from some future perspective. Almost like listening to someone tell you a story of 3 people he/she once knew. At points the story is also written from the present, first-person point of view. This offers the reader a glimpse into each character's frame of mind and certainly adds realism.

I love also that the 'narrator' uses the events of the plot to raise philosophocal questions. The author asks the reader 'why do we choose to live?', 'is there anything unforgivable, and if not then what of justice?'. I found this extremely intriguing, as if I was somehow playing a part in the outcome of the book.

Another thing the author accomplishes is presenting, through the characters, the idea that people are not always what they seem or who we think them to be. Each of us has the capacity for good and bad, the ability to help or to harm, to believe or discredit. I think this book is a wonderful look into the human experience.

My only fault with this book is the editing. I listed at least 4 grammatical errors and typos. Although I could infer what the author meant to say, I find it highly aggravating that highschool teachers pay more attention to spelling and grammar than a major publishing company. If you expect thousands of people to read your work, I would hope that you would have it proof-read enough times to fix common mistakes.

Other than the typos, I found this book very enjoyable and thought-provoking. I recommend it to anyone.

This is the densest and most serious of all of Mary Gordon's novels. It is not an easy read. I am reminded of that as I read the other reviews here. Nor is it particularly entertaining. But I was deeply moved. Loss, sacrifice and forgiveness are the themes of this big book.

Perhaps the most intriguing character in this book is the narrator. As the book develops, she inserts herself more and more into the story line with asides and questions. The author does not leave it to the reader to ask the important questions: She has the narrator confront the reader directly with them. (If I were a student looking for a novel to write about, this would be an easy choice: The questions are all there waiting for the answers supported by the plot.} I enjoyed imagining different persona for the narrator--gossipy middle-aged coffee drinker, older grandfatherly type rocking and talking--you get the idea--and I enjoyed filling in the other side of the conversation. I'd recommend it to a friend or reading group.

From the beginning, I was amazed with Ms. Gordon's ability to explore, to really know, her characters and the complicated nuances of relationships---I believe like few can. As a mother it was easy to relate to the "whys and hows" when you believe that you have done only the best.
Everything connected and flowed nicely until the end when Joseph confronts Pearl in the hospital. It wasn't necessary and it felt very misplaced in such a carefully plotted out complicated story. The book fell apart for me when he entered Pearl's room. I was so disappointed. Until then it was a 5 star.