Pearl

LONG-LISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • Heartbreaking and redeeming, Pearl is the story of a young woman in a small English village who is struggling with the disappearance of her mother, what feels like a lifetime ago.
"A masterful novel, shot through with legend and song. It can be read on many levels: as a mystery, as a story of grief and healing, as a response to a poem. But most of all, it can be read as a story of love." -The Boston Globe
"A gorgeous, swirling, haunted and haunting potion of a book...How utterly moving, to be under its beautiful, artful spell." -Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Tinkers and This Other Eden
Marianne is eight years old when her mother goes missing.
Left behind with her baby brother and grieving father in a ramshackle house on the edge of a small village, she clings to the fragmented memories of her mother's love; the smell of fresh herbs, the games they played, and the songs and stories of her childhood.
As time passes, Marianne finds it difficult to adjust, fixated on her mother's disappearance and the secrets she's sure her father is keeping from her. Yet, in one of her mother's dusty old books, she discovers a medieval poem called Pearl, and, trusting in the promise of its consolation, it seems as if her life begins to parallel the poem's course.
But questions remain. Marianne is ever more tormented by the unmarked gravestone in the abandoned chapel and the tidal pull of the river, and as her childhood home begins to crumble, the past leads her down a path of self-destruction. Can Marianne ever come to understand her mother's choices? And will her own future as a mother help her find her peace?

SIÂN HUGHES grew up in a small village in Cheshire, where the story of Pearl is set. Returning to live there after her mother's death, she borrowed from the medieval poem Pearl to write a story set in an old house she cycled past every day as a child. Her first collection of poetry, The Missing (Salt, 2009), was long-listed for the Guardian First Book Award, short-listed for the Felix Dennis and Aldeburgh prizes, and won the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry. Pearl is her first novel, and she lives in Malpas, UK.