MOTHER OF PEARL: A Novel (Signed)

Swift, Edward

ISBN 10: 0945167261 / ISBN 13: 9780945167266

Published by British American Publishing, 1990

About this Item

SIGNED BY AUTHOR --- --- Please see any and all photos connected with this listing. Cover and spine are like new. No dog-eared corners. Solid Binding. All pages intact and legible. Clean. No store stamps. --- --- Introduces the McAlister dynasty, a quirky, quarrelsome Southern family that includes such colorful characters as overbearing matriarch Eugenia Fane; her son Frank, who seeks peace in jail; and his squabbling sisters, Wanda Gay and Pearl. . .See photos for additional content. . .

Seller Inventory # 38760

Bibliographic Details

• Title: MOTHER OF PEARL: A Novel (Signed)
• Publisher: British American Publishing
• Publication Date: 1990
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0945167261
• ISBN 13: 9780945167266
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • General Fiction

About this title

Synopsis

Introduces the McAlister dynasty, a quirky, quarrelsome Southern family that includes such colorful characters as overbearing matriarch Eugenia Fane; her son Frank, who seeks peace in jail; and his squabbling sisters, Wanda Gay and Pearl

Reviews

Although this tale about a family acting out its nuttiness winds down before it ends, good humor and the author's respect for his characters prevail. Widowed grandmother Pearl moved back home to East Texas, to live with sister Wanda Gay. They bicker continually about where to plant new rose bushes, whether their mother was devil or saint, how to raise children, what to wear. Swift reveals, through flashbacks and the women's natterings, how people bear the overwhelming weight of an inherited past: their grandmother, who responded to her husband's affair with their mulatto housekeeper by becoming outrageously crazy; their mother, who, wanting above all to appear normal, learned to detest men, to play the piano and finally to ape her mother's flambuoyant death. Though some of this seems contrived, Pearl, who favors her father, an iconoclastic auto mechanic, partly escapes and partly is bound to her heritage in this mostly genial, slightly frayed, story from the author of The Christopher Park Regulars.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is the tale of the McAlister family's incessant bickering, which is fueled by the entire clan of petulant, ill-humored, contentious McAlisters. While the novel has much to recommend it--interestingly eccentric characters, an energetic unfolding of events, a deft focusing on various members of five generations of McAlisters--ultimately, it is not successful. The characters, for example, all sound the same; not one has a distinct voice. The ending, too, when the reason for all the bickering is explained, is most unsatisfactory. Generally, what is meant to be amusing is only tiresome.
- Dorothy Golden, Georgia Southern Coll., Statesboro
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.