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In 1948, a nineteen-year old Japanese woman's dreams of spending her life pearl diving are shattered when she learns she has leprosy. She knows that the shame attached to the ancient disease is inescapable: rejection by her family is imminent, exile unavoidable. No more than two months elapse before authorities send her off to a leprosarium on the island of Nagashima and, although it is only seven miles from her home, it is a world away from all that is familiar to her. At once, she is instructed to forget her past, to strike her name from the family register, and ordered to choose a new name. As Miss Fuji looks around her. she sees her own future in the debilitated bodies and the lives of the more than two thousand other patients. But her future never comes, her own case of leprosy remains a mild one due to the discovery of a new medicine. Over time, her strength and appearance of normality separate her from those whom the disease has ravaged, and her connection to the sea is never broken. However she is not permitted to leave and she wonders whether she could even survive back on the mainland. Depicting the lives of the patients in a perfectly balanced combination of sympathy, kindness, and veracity, THE PEARL DIVER is written with exquisite precision and eloquence by the remarkable new talent Jeff Talarigo.
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Review:
A first novel of rare beauty and sensitivity, Jeff Talarigo's The Pearl Diver follows the harsh fate of a 19-year-old Japanese pearl diver who is diagnosed with leprosy. It is 1948. There are trial medications for her condition, but a weight of prejudice against her. Her name is erased from the family register, and she is rowed to a lifelong exile at the island leprosarium on Nagashima. Ordered to give herself a new name, she decides on Miss Fuji, for the mountain she loves. The balance of the novel is delivered in poignant fragments that appear as notes to a modern-day anthropological study of the leprosarium. Numbered artifacts like "An old map of Honshu" and "A blank white urn" spark stories of the patients Miss Fuji has known and cared for, most of whom were much sicker than she: crippled, blinded, deformed, but all the more human for their suffering. The cruelties inflicted on the patients at Nagashima almost rival the cruelties of the disease itself. Talarigo's novel could easily succumb to sentimentality, but he maintains the poise of Miss Fuji: one who watches, who does not forgive, but who will not be lowered by vengeance or despair. --Regina Marler
From the Inside Flap:
In 1948, a nineteen-year-old Japanese pearl diver is in her fourth season of perfecting the techniques of her age-old occupation. But her dreams of spending her life diving in the waters of the Inland Sea are shattered when she discovers that she has leprosy. She knows that the shame attached to the disease is inescapable: rejection by her family is imminent, exile unavoidable. No more than two months elapse before authorities send her off to a leprosarium on the island of Nagashima, and although it is only seven miles from her home, it is a world away from all that is familiar to her. At once, she is instructed to forget her past, to strike her name from the koseki, the family register, and ordered to choose a new name.
As “Miss Fuji” looks around her, she sees her own future in the debilitated bodies and the lives of the more than two thousand other patients. But her “future” never comes; her own case of leprosy remains a mild one owing to the discovery of a medicine that impedes the disease’s progression in its victims. Yet she is not permitted to leave Nagashima, and over time, she wonders whether she could even survive back on the mainland. In the end, it is her constant connection to the sea and her moving encounters with those around her—a writer, a Korean storyteller, a gardener, a tanka poet, an urn painter—that give her insight into her own true nature and the deep wellspring of courage she needs to reclaim her freedom.
Written with precision and eloquence, The Pearl Diver is an unforgettable and compassionate tale of one woman’s search for wisdom, beauty, and self-worth; an extraordinary literary debut by Jeff Talarigo.
As “Miss Fuji” looks around her, she sees her own future in the debilitated bodies and the lives of the more than two thousand other patients. But her “future” never comes; her own case of leprosy remains a mild one owing to the discovery of a medicine that impedes the disease’s progression in its victims. Yet she is not permitted to leave Nagashima, and over time, she wonders whether she could even survive back on the mainland. In the end, it is her constant connection to the sea and her moving encounters with those around her—a writer, a Korean storyteller, a gardener, a tanka poet, an urn painter—that give her insight into her own true nature and the deep wellspring of courage she needs to reclaim her freedom.
Written with precision and eloquence, The Pearl Diver is an unforgettable and compassionate tale of one woman’s search for wisdom, beauty, and self-worth; an extraordinary literary debut by Jeff Talarigo.
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- PublisherRecorded Books
- Publication date2004
- ISBN 10 1402572778
- ISBN 13 9781402572777
- BindingAudio Cassette
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Book Description Audio Cassette. Condition: Very Good. Tapes, artwork and case all in excellent condition with only minor shelf wear. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed. Orders received before 3PM PT typically ship same day. All profits support the non-profit community. Free upgrade to First Class shipping. Seller Inventory # mon0000108397
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The Pearl Diver (Audio Cassette)
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Book Description Condition: Very Good. 5 audio cassettes in original cardboard case. Slight wear to case. Cassettes are in excellent condition. NOT a former library copy. Running time: 7.5 hrs. 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.". Book. Seller Inventory # 019832
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The Pearl Diver (Audio Cassette)
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Book Description Condition: Very Good. 5 audio cassettes in clamshell case. Slight wear to case. Cassettes are in excellent condition. NOT a former library copy. Running time: 7.5 hrs. 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.". Book. Seller Inventory # 028606
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