BOOK REVIEW | The Pearl

The beginning of June was rough. With George Floyd and the protests, and coronavirus, and the bullshit Trump spews on a daily basis, I wasn’t in the mood to enjoy myself. With that in mind, I picked the smallest, oldest book I could find on my shelf as a type of punishment - or as a way to boost the number of books I’ve read this year with a tiny one I knew I could finish in an hour and supply myself with the smallest dopamine boost. It worked x 2. I not only got dopamine from finishing the book, but it had a dark ending so it was a bit of a punishment too. Very well written though, and I’m emboldened by my positive feelings toward this novella to pick up another Steinbeck.

“Like his father and grandfather before him, Kino is a poor diver, gathering pearls from the gulf beds that once brought great wealth to the kings of Spain and now provide Kino, Juana, and their infant son with meager subsistence. Then, on a day like any other, Kino emerges from the sea with a pearl as large as a sea gull’s egg, as “perfect as the moon.” With the pearl comes hope, the promise of comfort and of security… A story of classic simplicity, based on a Mexican folk tale, The Pearl explores the secrets of man’s nature, greed, the darkest depths of evil, and the luminous possibilities of love.”

For such a small novella (it runs at 118 pages), it packs a lot of commentary and lessons in its slender form. The corrupting influence of greed and fortune, the consequences of colonization, and the testing of family ties are all explored with ease in the narrative. There seems to be some argument about the moral of the story - most read it as I did, which was interpreting the story to mean that money and power can corrupt and, while it may solve some problems, it brings with it a host of others. Some seem to see it as an attack on the fictional American Dream - they say Steinbeck uses his characters to indicate that they should not work hard to better themselves because only bad things will happen to them. But as other reviewers noted, the story opens with the main characters being as happy as a clam (or maybe an oyster) despite their impoverished lifestyle, and the first things Kino dreams to use his newfound fortune on are his child’s education and clothes for his official church wedding to his wife. It is only when other people begin to act selfishly that things begin to escalate and his priorities become obscured.

All in all, it is a charming, well-written read perfect for a scorching day.

3/5 stars.

Happy reading,

Holly