Mary Morrissy Criticism
Mary Morrissy is an acclaimed Irish writer known for her incisive explorations of character and evocative settings in novels and short stories. Her works often delve into themes of obsession, identity, and memory, with a focus on the lives of women and children. In her 1993 short story collection, A Lazy Eye, Morrissy presents characters facing bleak realities, such as a kleptomaniac who destroys what she steals and a young woman who sabotages her romantic interest's child. This collection has been received with mixed assessments, as noted by James Marcus and Michael Harris.
Her novel Mother of Pearl (1995) is often celebrated for its "lyrical and terribly sad" narrative, as Nancy Pearl describes, and provides a poignant look at Irish society in the mid-20th century. The story revolves around Irene Rivers, a former tuberculosis patient who kidnaps a newborn, and the resulting impact on three women's lives. Irene's obsession and the intertwining fates of Pearl, the kidnapped child, and Rita, her biological mother, highlight themes of abandonment, societal repression, and the complex interplay between memory and identity. Critic Michael Harris praises Morrissy's compassionate characterizations, while Nancy Middleton underscores the novel's deep exploration of memory. Claire Messud highlights Morrissy's focus on "the violent movement between the external and the internal." With such thematic richness, Mother of Pearl stands as a testament to Morrissy's literary prowess, offering a profound meditation on the human condition and the inevitability of the past's influence on the present.
Contents
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Mother of Pearl
(summary)
In the following positive review, the critic describes Morrissy's writing in Mother of Pearl as giving off "sparks of feminist insights and gimlet humor." The novel portrays women wrestling with their inner demons, focusing on Irene Rivers, who stays in an Irish sanatorium from 1947 through the mid-1950s. After marrying Stanley Godwin and becoming obsessed with having a baby, Irene kidnaps an infant girl, leading to a complex narrative about identity and memory.
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Mother of Pearl
(summary)
In the following review, the critic relates the plot of Mother of Pearl, describing it as a "haunting first novel." Emotionally needy Irene and Stanley meet in a tuberculosis sanitorium in 1940s Dublin. Their hasty marriage soon founders when Stanley's impotence causes them both unending pain and embarrassment. This leads Irene down a dangerous path where she first fabricates a pregnancy and is later driven to snatch an infant from a hospital nursery. Amid random acts of everyday violence, the consequences of this outrageous act resonate down through the years.
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Mother of Pearl
(summary)
In the following review, Pearl describes Mother of Pearl as "well-written, lyrical, and terribly sad." Set in Ireland in the 1950s, this well-written, lyrical, and terribly sad novel is the story of Irene Rivers, who, at the age of 18, is sent away to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis. Long after Irene is cured, she stays on at Granitefield, which she regards as home. But when an act of kindness on Irene's part is misunderstood, she escapes by marrying the son of another patient and moving to Dublin with him. When Irene tells her impotent husband, Stanley Goodman, that she is pregnant, he inexplicably believes her. Like a rock gathering destructive force as it hurtles downhill, this one act of deception sets in motion events with lifelong repercussions for three women: Irene, the baby named Pearl, and Pearl's mother, Rita Golden. Skillfully shifting narrative perspectives between the three, Morrissy forces the reader to acknowledge that their subsequent actions, which include a kidnapping, an abortion, and having an imaginary child, though bizarre, are, in the end, all too understandable. This novel, Morrissy's first book to appear in the U.S., will leave readers pondering the inevitability of events and wondering which of the characters deserves their pity more.
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Nobody's Child
(summary)
In the favorable review below, in which she discusses the plot and theme of Mother of Pearl, Messud notes Morrissy's focus on Irish society, despair, and "the violent movement between the external and the internal."
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Mother of Pearl
(summary)
In the review below, Harris explores Morrissy's emphasis on character development in Mother of Pearl. The Irish are inexhaustible—here comes yet another gifted writer from that buoyantly tragic isle. [With Mother of Pearl] Mary Morrissy has written a novel about marginal people, thwarted hopes and cruelly deformed love that fairly bursts with the juice of language and compassion for her characters. So that the tragedy, when it comes, is all the more devastating.
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Mother of Pearl
(summary)
In the review below, Middleton examines Morrissy's focus on memory and the past's effect on the present in Mother of Pearl. This first novel is a painfully deep exploration of the power of memory—particularly childhood memory—to color and define a life. A tubercular child banished to a sanitorium, Irene Rivers decides early that "there was no God; there was only sickness and health." The patients and staff at Granitefield become her family until, miraculously, she is cured and then, almost as miraculously, "rescued" via marriage.
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Lost and Found
(summary)
In the following highly favorable review, she praises Morrissy's characterization and thematic focus in Mother of Pearl, describing it as an "acute, elegiac first novel."
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Quite Contrary
(summary)
In the following essay, drawn from an interview with the author, O'Sullivan relates details of Morrissy's upbringing and her views on family, writing, and children.
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Tragic Irish Stories Blended with a Dash of Sly Humor
(summary)
In the review below, written upon the occasion of the U.S. publication of A Lazy Eye, Harris offers a thematic discussion of the work, finding the collection weaker than the novel Mother of Pearl.
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A Lazy Eye
(summary)
In the mixed assessment below, Marcus discusses thematic and stylistic aspects of A Lazy Eye.