Pearl: A novel

by Siân Hughes

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A girl, an old house, and one haunting poem. This story of mothers, daughters and family mythologies is perfect for readers of Paul Harding and Ann Patchett.

LONG-LISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • Heartbreaking and redeeming, Pearl is the story of a young woman in a small English village who is struggling with the disappearance of her mother, what feels like a lifetime ago.

"A masterful novel, shot through with legend and song. It can be read on many levels: as a mystery, as a story of grief and healing, as a response to a poem. But most of all, it can be read as a story of love." —The Boston Globe

"A gorgeous, swirling, haunted and haunting potion of a book...How utterly moving, to be under its beautiful, artful spell." —Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Tinkers and This Other Eden

Marianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing.

Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of a small village, she clings to the fragmented memories of her mother’s love; the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, and the songs and stories of her childhood.

As time passes, Marianne finds it difficult to adjust, fixated on her mother’s disappearance and the secrets she’s sure her father is keeping from her. Yet, in one of her mother’s dusty old books, she discovers a medieval poem called Pearl, and, trusting in the promise of its consolation, it seems as if her life begins to parallel the poem's course.

But questions remain. Marianne is ever more tormented by the unmarked gravestone in the abandoned chapel and the tidal pull of the river, and as her childhood home begins to crumble, the past leads her down a path of self-destruction. Can Marianne ever come to understand her mother’s choices? And will her own future as a mother help her find her peace?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593802564
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/30/2024
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	6,783
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

SIÂN HUGHES grew up in a small village in Cheshire, where the story of Pearl is set. Returning to live there after her mother’s death, she borrowed from the medieval poem Pearl to write a story set in an old house she cycled past every day as a child. Her first collection of poetry, The Missing (Salt, 2009), was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, short-listed for the Felix Dennis and Aldeburgh prizes, and won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry. Pearl is her first novel, and she lives in Malpas, UK.

Editorial Reviews

A New York Times Summer Reading List Recommended Title • A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 at LitHub

"A beautiful tale of sadness and enduring love.... that feels like a modern fairy tale.... Pearl is a masterful novel, shot through with legend and song. It can be read on many levels: as a mystery, as a story of grief and healing, as a response to a poem. But most of all, it can be read as a story of love."—Laurie Hertzel, The Boston Globe

"Pearl is a gorgeous, swirling, haunted and haunting potion of a book. It embodies like no other the truth that every absence is as singular and elaborate and mysterious as the presence of the thing—or person—it describes, no matter how back to front, inside out, lucidly or ethereally memories of its particulars may come and go. How utterly moving, to be under its beautiful, artful spell." —Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Tinkers and This Other Eden

“Pearl, an exceptional debut novel, is both a mystery story and a meditation on grief, abandonment and consolation, evoking the profundities of the haunting medieval poem... It’s a book that will be passed from hand to hand for a long time to come.” — The Booker Prize 2023 judges

"[A] gorgeous novel.... Marianne sees her grief and love reflected in the preserved, 14th-century lines [of the poem Pearl].... Hughes’s placid and deep novel chains sorrows to each other as the narrative unfurls, creating a delicate tether connecting moments of loss."—Literary Hub

"Hughes, who is a poet herself, brings an attention to language and to the natural world that lends a beautiful vibrancy to her sentences.... [And h]umor brightens grief-filled and difficult moments... Pearl is also full of the gentle landscape and hallowed folklore of English village life, sometimes with a slightly gothic cast....[A] tender debut novel"—BookPage, "Fresh Voices"
  
“Compulsive and wonderfully written, Pearl is a small gem.” —The Times Literary Supplement

From the Publisher

08/16/2024

DEBUT Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, poet Hughes's debut novel traverses the life of Marianne, the primary narrator. Marianne's mother disappeared when she was eight, leaving Marianne's father, Edward, to care for her and her younger brother in the small English village where they reside. Marianne's reckoning with the loss of her mother is the fundamental driving force of this novel. As she herself matures and becomes a young mother, she gains insight into her mother's mental health as well as her own. The medieval poem "Pearl," discovered among her mother's belongings, becomes a source of solace, though Marianne also finds comfort and relief in her budding art career. Hughes is at her best when tracing Marianne's dreamy and vague memories of her mother as a young child. She is less successful tracing the turbulence of Marianne's rebellious adolescent years. VERDICT Hughes shows off her skills as an award-winning poet in this well-executed exploration of the emotional impact parental loss can inflict on a young person. Readers will also appreciate the author's introduction of a nursery rhyme or some folkloric element for each chapter's epigraph.—Faye A. Chadwell

Library Journal