Mother of Pearl

Rating:
Summary: Review for Mother of Pearl
Review: This book is a very slow read. It takes quite a while for the book to grab the reader, then its still moves pretty slowly. The books contains many stories, most seem to intertwine with each other effortlessly. However there are some chapters that should have been edited out. I wish the author would have focused on just a couple of the characters instead of making every character that was introduced into a main character. I feel since this book is called "Mother of Pearl" that it should have focused more on Val and Jackson. At the end I had more questions than answers.

Rating:
Summary: Review for Mother of Pearl
Review: This book is a very slow read. It takes quite a while for the book to grab the reader, then its still moves pretty slowly. The books contains many stories, most seem to intertwine with each other effortlessly. However there are some chapters that should have been edited out. I wish the author would have focused on just a couple of the characters instead of making every character that was introduced into a main character. I feel since this book is called "Mother of Pearl" that it should have focused more on Val and Jackson. At the end I had more questions than answers.

Rating:
Summary: Challenging Prose, but interesting nonetheless
Review: This book really took awhile to get used to. I had to start it a few times before I could even get past the first few pages. The prose is so thick and metaphorical it requires more effort than I was expecting for a summer novel. At first, I also found the names rather cheesy - Even Grade, Valuable Korner? I mean, really.

Once I started to get into the actual story I began to enjoy it however. The characters start to really show their personalities and you start to care for them all - Canaan's stubborn grumpiness, Valuable's tenacity, Joody's quirks. The author really creates quite the set of characters, and while they're not wholly believable, there are enough pieces of reality to let you believe.

I kept going back and forth in my feelings about the book. The book seemed to grow in its intensity up until the flood. At that point it was quite exciting and I kept wanting to read more. However, the flood for me seemed like an ending to the book. There was the resolution of the drought being over, and the sense that everyone was just beginning their new lives together. Joleb had been found and rescued, and all seemed well. With Val's pregnancy in the background during that time, I found myself wondering why there was so much left in the book. Here is where it became more difficult to read again. The general flow of the book seemed to halt in its tracks.

I had really enjoyed seeing the relationship between Jackson and Val grow and evolve, and was rather disappointed when Jackson left. When he doesn't show up until the end of book again, I'm almost mad that he did come back. All the other characters were developed so much more fully by that time, Jackson seemed like an afterthought. He'd been gone too long for me to care too much about him as a character.

While I didn't really think so while reading the book, thinking back on it now there are quite a few storylines and characters. While interestingly intertwined, it's difficult to describe even a basic plot for the book, which means that it's probably too complicated. Also, while the author tries to be metaphorical, the book really didn't make me stop and ponder the deeper meanings of her text or of life. I think I just wasn't willing to put that much effort into a novel during the summer. A literature class would probably have a very different time with it and get more out of it.

This is a good book with an interesting story, but it's probably a great book if you are willing to spend the time and effort into unraveling it's vast, deep meanings. I think they must be in there somewhere.

Rating:
Summary: A gripping, intense and moving piece of literature!
Review: This book was one of the best pieces of fiction I've read in a long time. But as others have stated, Ms. Haynes style of writing is very wordy. I found myself having to reread certain passages two or three times. At the time I almost resented having to do so but after finishing the book I realize that this also contributed to "the story." I feel that I now know these characters personally. I can hardly wait for the movie! Being a white woman born immediately after this time period gave me an advantage in being able to get to know these complex characters of Ms. Haynes. Also, being form the South , I found myslelf being able to associate people from my small town childhood with Val, Cannan, Joleb and especially Evan. Keep writing Ms. Haynes. I am encouraging my 21 year old daughter to read this book. She is an avid reader and I am very curious to hear her thoughts on the book. Again, the movie cannot come to us soon enough.

Rating:
Summary: Strange
Review: This book was very different from all the other books I have read before. It told a couple stories at once and it got very confusing to follow at first but then once i got used to reading it, it was a good book. I liked the way the characters were all linked in the end and how they learned to get along.
The way the girl has to teach her self everything and has to learn the hardway about everything was very humbling to read. Then getting pregnant in the middle of the book and not knowing it and everyone else knowing it and not telling you till it's to late was very sad.
All in all it was a good book. I never really liked to read long books but this one kept my attention.

Rating:
Summary: Feel like I wasted my time.
Review: This is a book that you will not forget. Mother of Pearl is an amazing novel that shows the differences in society circles in the south (racism and prejudice). The book is set in Petal, Mississippi. 14 year old white Valuable lives with her grandmother and has one true friend, Jackson. Valuable was abandoned as a baby by her town [prostitute] mother. For a while the book seperates the stories of Valuable and a young black man named Even (who was orphaned as a baby) and brings their paths together in the middle of the book through Joody. Joody is considered the town's crazy woman (voodoo witch). Valuable goes to Joody to try and find out about herself. Even falls in love with Joody. When Valuable's grandmother dies her mother comes back and makes her life miserable. Valuable falls in love with Jackson (who we find out is her half-brother, but neither Valuable or Jackson know their father is the same man). Valuable becomes pregnant and Jackson's family moves him far away. Valuable has no contact with him and can't tell him that she's pregnant. Valuable comes to love and depend on her gay aunt, Even, Joody, Grace, and Jackson's best friend. During the birth Valuable has complications and dies. Even takes the baby as his own to raise because he can't make the baby an orphan, because of his own past. Jackson learns that Valuable is dead when he returns to see her with flowers in hand only to be forced to read her tombstone. This book shows that love and friendship really do conquer all. This is an unforgetable read.

Rating:
Summary: A Book You Remember
Review: This is a book that you will not forget. Mother of Pearl is an amazing novel that shows the differences in society circles in the south (racism and prejudice). The book is set in Petal, Mississippi. 14 year old white Valuable lives with her grandmother and has one true friend, Jackson. Valuable was abandoned as a baby by her town [prostitute] mother. For a while the book seperates the stories of Valuable and a young black man named Even (who was orphaned as a baby) and brings their paths together in the middle of the book through Joody. Joody is considered the town's crazy woman (voodoo witch). Valuable goes to Joody to try and find out about herself. Even falls in love with Joody. When Valuable's grandmother dies her mother comes back and makes her life miserable. Valuable falls in love with Jackson (who we find out is her half-brother, but neither Valuable or Jackson know their father is the same man). Valuable becomes pregnant and Jackson's family moves him far away. Valuable has no contact with him and can't tell him that she's pregnant. Valuable comes to love and depend on her gay aunt, Even, Joody, Grace, and Jackson's best friend. During the birth Valuable has complications and dies. Even takes the baby as his own to raise because he can't make the baby an orphan, because of his own past. Jackson learns that Valuable is dead when he returns to see her with flowers in hand only to be forced to read her tombstone. This book shows that love and friendship really do conquer all. This is an unforgetable read.

Rating:
Summary: A Slice of Delicious Southern Literary Pie!
Review: This is now one of my top five favorite books. The book reads like a screenplay, you can picture each chapter as clearly as a scene from a movie. The characters are so rich in southern culture and euphemisms, for me it brought back childhood memories of people and places long since forgotten. An amazing aspect of the book was the richness of the minor characters. They are deeply rounded and just as complete as the characters from the main storyline.

After the first 3 or 4 chapters, a reader will realize how enticing this book is. It draws you in slowly and soon you are aware that you want to race back to read even a couple of pages, much like I imagine a soap opera hypnotizes a viewer.

Rating:
Summary: Pearl is a boy; his mother is a seer.....
Review: This novel is the story of 28-yr-old Even Grade who grew up as an orphan in Mississippi and Joody, a seer, the mother of Pearl (a grey-eyed male). Opening in 1956 in the magnolia state where the two meet; ending five years later (1961) in Alabama, the cotton state, when Pearl is four and his friend Sophy Marie (named after Sophocles) is three. She's the daughter of Grace and Cannan Mosley. Pearl had said, "Girls don't like to be bossed." She uses the Negro language of the fifties.

When I was eleven, I had a half-sister named Mary Ruth Mosley whose mother died and, subsequently, the 3-yr-old child was adopted by someone from her mother's family. The name Mosley brought back memories of the loss of a little girl I loved very much.

This is promoted as a tale of the search for identify and the power of renewal. It is based on one of the stories Ray Haynes passed on to his wife. She uses these quotes (which are signifigant): "Fate has terrible power. You cannot escape it by wealth or war. No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it" by Sophocles. "Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders," by William Faulkner who knew the South and its inhabitants better than almost any other writer.

Rating:
Summary: Pearl is a boy; his mother is a seer.....
Review: This novel is the story of 28-yr-old Even Grade who grew up as an orphan in Mississippi and Joody, a seer, the mother of Pearl (a grey-eyed male). Opening in 1956 in the magnolia state where the two meet; ending five years later (1961) in Alabama, the cotton state, when Pearl is four and his friend Sophy Marie (named after Sophocles) is three. She's the daughter of Grace and Cannan Mosley. Pearl had said, "Girls don't like to be bossed." She uses the Negro language of the fifties.

When I was eleven, I had a half-sister named Mary Ruth Mosley whose mother died and, subsequently, the 3-yr-old child was adopted by someone from her mother's family. The name Mosley brought back memories of the loss of a little girl I loved very much.

This is promoted as a tale of the search for identify and the power of renewal. It is based on one of the stories Ray Haynes passed on to his wife. She uses these quotes (which are signifigant): "Fate has terrible power. You cannot escape it by wealth or war. No fort will keep it out, no ships outrun it" by Sophocles. "Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders," by William Faulkner who knew the South and its inhabitants better than almost any other writer.