- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Anchor; Reprint edition (April 12 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400034914
- ISBN-13: 978-1400034918
- Product Dimensions: 13.2 x 1.4 x 20.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 181 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #440,445 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This unusual debut novel set in 1940s postwar Japan renders brutality and intolerance in quiet, lyrical prose. When a 19-year-old pearl diver, the youngest of a crew working the Seto Inland Sea, discovers she is sick with leprosy, she is banished to Nagashima, an island leprosarium, where she is told to change her name and forget her past. Nagashima is its own kind of civilization, where the renamed "Miss Fuji" must care for the sicker patients, which includes helping the island doctors perform forced, often late-term abortions. Treated with drugs that make her isolation unnecessary, Miss Fuji remains healthy ("she has only the two spots on her body.... Medals or curses, she isn't sure how to wear them"), but she is still not permitted to leave and remains a captive for most of her life. The novel is divided into three sections, with the middle (and by far most substantial) section revealing its story through artifacts, as each object evokes a haunting, smaller story. At times the characters are drawn as artifacts themselves, with strained, wooden dialogue ("You deserve to be with all these freaks here." "There are no freaks here, only people who are sick"). As if to mimic his protagonist's bracketed sense of time, Talarigo details minute scenes and interactions, then jumps decades ahead. It's an effect that de-emphasizes his dramatic subject matter and allows the emotional consequences of the situation to surface in unexpected ways, as when Miss Fuji finds solace in watching children playing on a nearby shore. Drawing from actual medical history, Talarigo succeeds in telling a compelling story whose strength is its elegant simplicity.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Booklist
Talarigo's debut novel is a moving, quiet examination of a Japanese woman grappling with the stigma of the diagnosis that defines her life. In 1948, just after World War II, she is happily working as a pearl diver, but her life changes forever when she discovers a red sore on her arm. Diagnosed with leprosy, she is sent to the island of Nagashima, where lepers are kept in isolation. Disowned by her family (with the exception of her uncle), who think leprosy is a curse, she is forced to choose a new name and forget her past. Because her own case is mild and responds to treatment, the other patients rely on her for massages and comfort. But she longs for her diving days and is captivated by Mushiage, the city on the shore opposite Nagashima. Filled with heartbreaking details, from her uncle's yearly birthday gift to her to the passage of time to her observation of the normal life in Mushiage that is denied her, this is an unforgettable, achingly sad novel. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Pearl Diver: A Novel (Hardcover)
I telling story about the victims of leprosy in the not too distant past that is highly recommended. Compassionate and lyrical.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A brief, poetic glimpse into leprosy,
By
This review is from: The Pearl Diver: A Novel (Hardcover)
Rebeccasreads recommends THE PEARL DIVER as a sad, strange, exquisitely written if disjointed glimpse into the Japanese treatment of people infected with leprosy in a time when the medical community did not understand the disease & was filled with shame & prejudice. The only redemption & humanity in this tale is found in the compassion of the internees in the colony.Could not put it down!
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Pearl Diver,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Pearl Diver (Audio Cassette)
The Pearl Diver is an extraodinary read. It is a slim, spare, exquisitly written volume that is HUGE in content, story and significance. It reads like a poem.
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