Am I the only one who found this shockingly derivative? It was like Faulkner light with muddy, pretentious laughingly garble sentences and similes intended to be So Profound. Honestly, I fault the editors for not chopping 75 pages of twisted adjectives and sentences that left me thinking, "Huh?!"

The clichés and stereotypes are abundant, especially the old-saw that black people are more compassionate and "good" than the hopelessly dysfunctional white people. The pseudo-Faulkner themes abound: incest. teen pregnancy, lynchings, damaged orphans, small-town whores, strong black women holding down the fort, schoolteacher spinster, etc. --PUHleez! The characters were consistently cardboard and ones we've seen a million times in Southern novels. The only remotely engaging one was Neva, the butch lesbian. I just despised the witch doctor-like Joody--her spiritualism rang false in every scene..

The attempted comic scenes were so unfunny that I didn't realize i was supposed to be amused. And there is NO way in hell a black family could raise a white child in 1957 Alabama!

Shame on you, Oprah, for honoring this junk!

I loved this book. It contains some of the most beautiful and evocative prose that I have ever had the pleasure of reading. While I greatly enjoyed both the story and the bevy of unique characters, it was the language that frequently took my breath away. I was in awe of this author’s writing. This is a book to read at a pace that allows you to savour every word.

2.5 stars

"Mother of Pearl" is set in a small town within the South during the 1950's. Petal, Mississippi has plenty of drama as the story goes on. Namely, a woman has suffered a crippling stroke giving birth to her son; the child's father hides his identity but sends money for support. White teen-agers who fall in love turn out to be half siblings; when the girl gets pregnant and dies in childbirth, a black man raises the child; a lesbian whose brother is a priest, and a cranky lady who falls in love with an undertaker; a half ''Injin'' woman resides by the river, reading minds and casting spells.

Melinda Haynes's language left much to be desired because it is as vigorous as the Southern twang in the 1950s. Haynes tells the stories of Valuable Korner, a fatherless girl named after a real estate sign; Even Grade, an orphan, now grown, who was named for a road; and Joleb Green, whose name comes from a father he does not yet know. At one point, I could not keep track at the number of characters that Haynes introduced within the story. There is so much drama and so many people involved in the dispute that I found it difficult to follow along sometimes.

Haynes strives to bring a whole, rambunctious world into the book about the 1950s while trying to write in a 1950s style. Her language went over my head at times. For example, she animates a tattered road sign that's ''a too-old puzzle now for anybody to remember,'' ''lifted up by some mulish gust'' and odd angles of nature's radiance: ''Underneath the water at night the sand looked like ground-up bits of silver. Bluish-brown pieces of silver shining like sunken music.''

In the end, although I enjoyed a lot of Haynes' depiction of Petal, Miss., I did not love this book by any means. I found myself dragging through it but after reading a few other GR reviews, decided to push through and finish the book. There was so much added "fluff" in between each dramatic situation, that I had just about hit my breaking point to drop the book before a scene would arise that caught my attention. If you have patience, I would recommend this book. However, if you're looking for a quick read, hold off.

I bought this book used so I didn't know it was an Oprah selection until I read some of the reviews on Amazon. I was a little confused by some of the bad reviews here until I read a few of them. I have to say that I was on the fence with this one for the first 100 pages (seems to be a common complaint) but after that I was hooked. Give this one a good try if you have trouble with it because it WILL come together.

I've lived in the South all of my life and I thought many of the characters reminded me of people I've know over the years. Racism was not (and will not) be gone overnight, but people like the characters in this book make that happen. Sometimes it takes tragedy to force you to be around other races, but if this is what it takes to make you realize that they are not really that much different, then the sorrow might just be worth it. The south has always gotten a bad rap for being racist, and while I'm not saying horrible things haven't happened here, I just don't think we had more than everyone else.

Great book! I want to find other works written by Melinda Haynes.

Recieved this book as a gift and wasn't sure what it was about. I ended up enjoying it greatly.

This book was just not for me. I bought it at a used book sale & then realized that I had read it before. It was all familiar to me for the first 50 pages or so. Familiar, but not at all interesting. Pretty sure I started & quit it there sometime in the past. I tried to keep going into the new to me part, but in addition to being uninteresting, I found some of the imagery disturbing. Time to move on again, but marking as read & reviewing this time, so I don’t buy it again. The synopsis on the cover sounds compelling to me, but the book itself not so much.

I considered not finishing this book about 27 times. I typically enjoy historical fiction but this book was so hard to get through. SO SLOW. So many thoughts and details I didn’t understand the purpose of. Just wasn’t for me. Giving it 2 stars strictly because I’m proud I finished it.

I feel like this is one of those novels, akin to The Witching Hour, that requires more than one reading.
My one college-level English lit course taught 'active' reading. I found that off-putting. I had always read purely for enjoyment, in the moment. I didn't like to watch a movie and anticipate what would come next, or what the screenwriter 'meant'.
However, with Mother of Pearl, I can see the value of active reading. And will, indeed, pick this book back up in the future, using a highlighter and margin scribbles.

This book was not a quick read. I found it difficult to follow the storyline.

The characters are vibrant. This is not a feel-good story, but in typical Oprah Book Club fashion, it is full of dire life situations and tormented stories of abuse and sadness.

Oprah recommendation but I couldn't get into her writing style and how hard I had to work to figure out what her phrasing was saying. Her crass language was not something I think they'd use in the 50s so that also contributed to not being able to get into it.

An Oprah book that I bought and saved through the years while I was busy raising a child. Maybe I had too high of expectations, but I found parts of this book to be beautifully written and humorous but there were too many areas where a good editor could have streamlined and made it stronger. You need to give it a good 100 pages before it begins to make sense at all. All in all, a pretty big time commitment for a mediocre+ book.

tThis book I came upon in advisory, randomly. I picked it up, saw it was in the Oprah Book Club and also saw that it took place in the South while segregation was still occurring, which interested me. After reading this book, I do not regret picking it up because it has such an interesting story of these people who are basically trying to find themselves. Haynes uses a lot of Character Nyms, imagery, and characterizations to develop the novel in a way that is classic. The story is mainly about a man name Even Grade and a young girl named Valuable Korner who lives in Petal, Mississippi. They are both African Americans and have to adjust to their lives even though they are faced with many hardships. Even was an orphan who was seeking a family of his own, like Valuable. Valuable became an orphan after her mother left her and she had to live with her aunt. There were also a lot of relationships which were explained in the book which helped develop the characters fulfill the worlds they wanted to a slight extent.
tEven though this book was very long and seemed boring at some times, the overall story was very interesting to read about. To see how people had to go against society in order to simply fulfill normal lives, which mean obtaining a family and anything else which becomes a necessity to you, it remarkable. And perhaps the fact that it is fiction may discourage people; it is the underlying message which one will value. No one should stop at anything to fulfill what they want even if there are multiple constraints. I felt a strong connection to both Even and Valuable because they just wanted to find themselves and fill a void which they had let grow. I feel as though there are times when I stride for something I feel is missing in me and the only difference is that I find it hard to actually pursue it. However, in the end this was a great book and it helped reiterate the message of never giving up.