PEARL, A DAMN GOOD NOVEL

Well, as I was saying, quite some time ago - Mary Gordon's Pearl, A Novel. I finished it a while back, and Gail is now reading it. She's not as involved in it as I was - I have to think you need some serious down-and-dirty Catholicism in your background to get into any of Gordon's books. It's intrinsic to everything in them. (See my friend Tim's lengthy comment on the linked entry where I first talk about Mary Gordon.) The characters are the focus in her stories, and the characters are always deeply influenced -for better, or usually, for worse- by a Catholic childhood and/or adulthood. I am her audience, I must admit. Cradle Catholic, educated by nuns and priests all the way through undergraduate (and some graduate) school, began my teaching career in Catholic schools, yada yada. As Kate Clinton says, I am now a Recovering Catholic, trying not to react too hugely against my earlier indoctrination. Actually, I did react quite strenuously in the beginning, but have considerably mellowed now. I think.
(the book, girlfriend, talk about the book...oh!  okay, I will...)

But not very much - it's too much of a book to do it justice in a little journal entry. It's a mother-daughter story that roams from Manhattan to Dublin to Italy, the places where the three main characters are located for much of the book. Maria is the mother, Pearl her daughter, Joseph is Maria's lifelong friend and a surrogate father figure for Pearl. Although Pearl is the title character, this book is really Maria’s story. She is a ferocious child of sixties’ politics and anger, now the administrator of day-care centers for underprivileged children.

Her 20 year old daughter is in Ireland, spending a year in Dublin learning the Irish language, at least so her mother believes. In fact Pearl is learning many other Irish things besides the language – centuries of pain and anger as a result of "the troubles," martydom for a cause, the fragility of life, the fact that we are all capable of hurting others and culpable for it. The events of her semester in Ireland have led her to her own martydom, a hunger strike which she intends to end in her death, chained to the American Embassy flagpole.  After the State Department notifies Maria of what is happening in Dublin, she and Joseph get there as soon as they can.  

Okay, listen – I give up.  Here are links to two very good reviews, Rene Loth’s in The Boston Globe, and John Leonard’s in The New York Times. I know it's the cheap way out, but it's late at night and it's been the Week from Deepest Hell.  Read the reviews, then just read the book. It’s a gripping story of moral searching, fierce maternal love, the strangeness of life, love, religion, doubt, and history. And, unlike one of the reviewers (I think it was Roth), I DID notice –right away- the fact that the two main adult characters in the book are named Mary (Maria) and Joseph, and that it takes place at Christmas.