Pearl, the haunting debut novel by poet Siân Hughes, tells a contemplative and sombre but finally hopeful story about the ripple effects of profound loss. Marianne Brown is eight years old when, on a day like any other, her mother, Margaret, walks out of the house and never returns, leaving behind her daughter, infant son Joe, and husband Edward. Marianne narrates from the perspective of her grown-up self after the passage of some thirty years. At the time of the disappearance, the family resided in a ramshackle house in a rural district outside a small town in England, near woodlands and a river. Marianne describes this setting as an enchanted place that feeds her voracious childish imagination: bursting with mysterious sights, sounds and smells, and stories waiting to be told. But after his wife’s disappearance, Edward, a university lecturer, moved the family to a conventional suburban home, which, initially anyway, Marianne loathed. Marianne grows up, becomes an adult, has a daughter, but her mother is with her every step of the way. For Marianne, the loss of her mother is that “before and after” moment, one that leaves her forever trapped in a cycle of regret and second-guessing, and that, inevitably, shapes the person she becomes. The story that Marianne narrates is loosely structured, incorporating memories both hazy and vivid, and shifting back and forth in time as she sifts through information given to her and information which she uncovers as she tries to unravel the mystery surrounding Margaret’s disappearance. Hughes takes inspiration for the novel from Pearl, a classic work of Middle English poetry, set in the English midlands, which describes in highly alliterative terms a father’s grief for his lost daughter. The novel addresses grief as well, but also serves as a meditation on coping with the kind of loss that has the potential to lay waste to the lives of those left behind. In Pearl, Siân Hughes has written a mesmerizing work of fiction, one with hidden depths, that cries out for repeated readings if you truly want to get to the bottom of it. ( )

9. Pearl by Siân Hughes
OPD: 2023
format: 222-page paperback
acquired: December read: Feb 14-22 time reading: 6:56, 1.9 mpp
rating: 4
genre/style: contemporary fiction theme: Booker 2023
locations: contemporary Chesire, England
about the author: Welsh poet, teacher, and novelist from Chesire, England. She was born in 1965.

My 11th from the 2023 Booker longlist. There are 13 on the list.

This one just doesn't fit the award mentality. All these new books are out there to make a statement, and Hughes was instead trying to find a way to make her story work. And it works.

This novel is about searching for a lost mother, in many ways. Our Marianne lost her mother when stepped out one day and was never seen again. Marianne was four, with a baby brother and a confused dad who never recovers. (The title refers to a copy of the Medieval Middle English [186366::Pearl poem] that Marianne found with her mother's annotations. I haven't read it, so I can't comment on how the themes work with each other. The novel takes place in Chesire, where the dialect of the Pearl Poet originated.)

This book is a life's work. Hughes has been reworking this story since she was a teenager, and this is her first novel. It's humble and beautiful, reads like a memoir because there is so much knowing and the voice feels very real. It feels like it did everything the author wanted it to do. It’s a self-consciously humble book that I really enjoyed spending time with.

2024
https://www.librarything.com/topic/358760#8437780 ( )

An interesting book, but it's rubbing me the wrong way that the reader is led to believe through the whole book that her mother killed herself when she was a child, only to reveal in the last pages that it seems more likely actually that her death was not intentional at all, but an accident brought on by remembered grief.

Why was she so unhappy? They turned the house inside out tracking down her sadness. But they were looking for the wrong thing... She was happy. That was the trouble. She was so happy that she forgot to be sad.

I understand that this is mirroring the adult narrator's life, believing growing up and in early adulthood that her mother killed herself, drowning herself in the river leading to the pilgrimage site for her stillborn child, then at last coming to believe her mother actually left the house all of a sudden to make the pilgrimage because she had forgotten what day it was and met with misfortune on the way. But I'm just not appreciating the switch-up. ( )

*Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize*

“When someone takes their life, they don’t only steal the future out from under our feet, they also desecrate their past. It makes it hard to hold on to the good things about them. And no one deserves to be judged on the worst five minutes of their life, even if those five minutes turn out to be their last.”

When Marianne Brown was eight years old, her mother disappeared, leaving her and her brother, who was just a baby at the time, to be raised by their father Edward, a college professor. The search for her mother revealed one footprint on the banks of a river near their home and nothing else. Growing up. Her mother’s disappearance was not discussed much and eventually, the family moved from what was once their home to live closer to where her father worked. The loss of her mother at such a young age left an indelible imprint on Marianne’s life. We follow her through her childhood, troubled teenage years and her own journey as a mother. As she grows older, Marianne struggles to hold onto her mother through a kaleidoscope of fragmented memories, often confused and overwhelmed by conflicting versions of events she can recall. Her memories of the time they spent together, her stories, the books they read, including the medieval poem “Pearl” (from which the title of this novel is inspired, though the details of the poem are not shared in the narrative) she found in one her mother’s books have a profound impact on her life and her worldview.

“Forgetting is not the worst thing. Remembering is not the worst thing either. The worst thing is when you have forgotten, and then you remember. It catches you out. You forgot for a moment, a day, a week, a month, but the effect is the same each time you remember. You feel it rushing back around your lymphatic system, and you remember the hurt. And there is a part of you that thinks, perhaps the pain is optional now? What might it be like to live without it? This is treachery. You hate yourself for it.”

Pearl by debut author Siân Hughes is a short but intense read – an exploration of grief and loss and how it evolves over the course of one’s life. The story did take a while to reel me in, but as the narrative progressed, I found myself deeply invested in Marianne’s journey. Revolving around themes of loss, grief, motherhood and self-discovery, the story is presented in the first-person narrative format from Marianne’s perspective. Marianne’s journey is a difficult one, and we bear witness to how, as she evolves as a person, her grief manifests into a quest to understand her mother and the events that led to her disappearance. She might not find all the answers, but in the course of her quest, she embarks on a cathartic journey of hope and personal healing. The author incorporates local ‘lore and customs into the narrative and each chapter begins with lines from poems /rhymes inspired by folklore. With its lyrical prose and vivid imagery, this is a beautifully written and profoundly moving story that will strike a chord in your heart.


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