The young couple who lose the child live, no less than Irene, in worlds of pathetic and destructive fantasy. Her craving for family and stability leads her to stay in the Granitefield sanatorium even after her cure, to do sexual favors for the inmates, to marry the first decent man who comes along and, when he proves impotent, to steal somebody else’s baby. Irene Rivers’ parents abandon her when she gets tuberculosis. So that the tragedy, when it comes, is all the more devastating. 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. MOTHER OF PEARL by Mary Morrissy (Scribner: $22 281 pp.) The Irish are inexhaustible-here comes yet another gifted writer from that buoyantly tragic isle.
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