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anusha_reads 's review for:
Pearl
by Siân Hughes
BOOK 2: PEARL by SIAN HUGHE, #bookerprize2023
What is so magical about a mom’s love that it gets etched into our souls? Why don’t we ever talk about a father’s love towards children?
If a child is rendered motherless, can fathers fill the void? Does it affect the children all through their life?
PEARL is a bildungsroman/psychological fiction.
A mother disappears, leaving behind her husband Edward, her baby Joe and eight-year-old Marianne.
The narrator of the story is Marianne. While reminiscing about the time she had spent with her mom, she talks about all the happy moments she had with her mom, reading books like Alice in Wonderland, Little Princess, Charlotte’s Web, and Harriet the Spy. She recollects the rhymes they would sing together, the bike rides, and how her mother used to be happy doing things for them. Then why did she leave them? Did she leave them? Did something happen to her?
She worries, thinks, mulls over, contemplates, regrets, doubts, and blames herself constantly and calls it a misadventure. She recollects but then she doubts her memories too, blaming herself again. One can feel the angst in the child, how she misses her mother, whom she spent all her time with. What would an eight-year-old child feel if she is being questioned time and again about her mother’s disappearance?
The people around them are not very empathetic towards them. The house they used to live in is dilapidated, but it is her house, and she knows its nooks and crannies. They move out of it, but she misses it a lot.
Being home-schooled for many years, Marianne finds it difficult to adjust and she plays hooky from school mostly.
I admired their father, Edward’s patience, who brought up the children as best as he could. He had injected the reality of the mother’s desertion into his life.
Later when Marianne becomes a mother, she keeps doubting herself, whether she might ditch her daughter the way her mom did or if she might pass on some bad genes to her daughter.
Like Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Marianne’s mom’s presence and absence are felt throughout the book.
It’s a beautiful heart-breaking story with a sprinkle of gothic elements. Every chapter has an epigraph, and it is invariably a cute rhyme.
The author has brilliantly portrayed the mental trauma Marianne goes through, throughout her life.
What is so magical about a mom’s love that it gets etched into our souls? Why don’t we ever talk about a father’s love towards children?
If a child is rendered motherless, can fathers fill the void? Does it affect the children all through their life?
PEARL is a bildungsroman/psychological fiction.
A mother disappears, leaving behind her husband Edward, her baby Joe and eight-year-old Marianne.
The narrator of the story is Marianne. While reminiscing about the time she had spent with her mom, she talks about all the happy moments she had with her mom, reading books like Alice in Wonderland, Little Princess, Charlotte’s Web, and Harriet the Spy. She recollects the rhymes they would sing together, the bike rides, and how her mother used to be happy doing things for them. Then why did she leave them? Did she leave them? Did something happen to her?
She worries, thinks, mulls over, contemplates, regrets, doubts, and blames herself constantly and calls it a misadventure. She recollects but then she doubts her memories too, blaming herself again. One can feel the angst in the child, how she misses her mother, whom she spent all her time with. What would an eight-year-old child feel if she is being questioned time and again about her mother’s disappearance?
The people around them are not very empathetic towards them. The house they used to live in is dilapidated, but it is her house, and she knows its nooks and crannies. They move out of it, but she misses it a lot.
Being home-schooled for many years, Marianne finds it difficult to adjust and she plays hooky from school mostly.
I admired their father, Edward’s patience, who brought up the children as best as he could. He had injected the reality of the mother’s desertion into his life.
Later when Marianne becomes a mother, she keeps doubting herself, whether she might ditch her daughter the way her mom did or if she might pass on some bad genes to her daughter.
Like Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Marianne’s mom’s presence and absence are felt throughout the book.
It’s a beautiful heart-breaking story with a sprinkle of gothic elements. Every chapter has an epigraph, and it is invariably a cute rhyme.
The author has brilliantly portrayed the mental trauma Marianne goes through, throughout her life.