A Book a Week - The Pearl

Book Twenty of the Book-a-Week Quest

The Pearl

by John Steinbeck (1947)

Throughout this book-a-week quest, I've discovered that I really love John Steinbeck.  This short novel fell flat for me, however.

Unlike Of Mice and Men which was a short story with very little exposition (and a ton of dialogue), and unlike East of Eden which was a very long novel with descriptions abounding, The Pearl was a short novel with very little dialogue and a ton of expository paragraphs.  I'm not pointing that out as a fault, rather I'm rather bringing it up because I'm rather intrigued at Steinbeck's varying writing styles.

The issue I had is that I just couldn't connect with Steinbeck's style in this one.  I found myself getting lost within the paragraphs and not being able to maintain my focus -- not because it was difficult to read, but because I felt like I was reading the same things over and over again...and I was.

The story (essentially a parable [I think] about greed) is incredibly simple.  A Mexican fisherman finds a giant pearl and thinks it will bring wealth and prosperity to his wife (although, now that I think about, I don't think they're married) and child.  Instead, it brings nothing but troubles as he is forced into doing things he never dreamed of in order to protect the pearl.

I know that this book is loved by a lot of people, but I just didn't love it.  It's not that it was awful, but it wasn't ever able to grab me at all.  Once he found the pearl, it felt like the whole story was the wife telling him to get rid of it and him refusing to do so.  With the novel being so short, I expected more than just repetition, and repetition is all I got.