Pearl

Starred review from September 11, 2023
In Welsh writer Hughes’s potent U.S. debut, a woman reckons with the effects of losing her mother as a child. Marianne’s mother disappeared when she was eight, leaving her, her baby brother Joe, and her father in their country house. Now, Marianne has a 13-year-old daughter, and she ruminates on her life, unsure whether she’s invented her memories of her mother, whom she recalls as a free-spirited woman with a penchant for folk rhymes, fairy tales, and magical thinking. The nonlinear narrative alternates with passages of Marianne as a child navigating her mother’s absence. She forgets how to read and frequently connives to stay home from school. After the family moves to a different house closer to her father’s work, Marianne struggles to adjust. At 15, she starts dating an older girl named Emily, who irresponsibly encourages Marianne’s poorly planned trip back to her old house, an episode that worsens Marianne’s developing mental health difficulties. Marianne’s narration smoothly but indirectly moves between her jumbled memories, including her stint in mental health treatment, obtaining of an art degree, and brush with postpartum psychosis, and slowly reveals her own theory of the circumstances behind her mother’s departure. This is a gorgeous reflection of the long, deep wounds of grief.