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A review by svmitche
Moonlight and the Pearler's Daughter by Lizzie Pook
4.0
What first drew me to Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter was the shiny cover that is brimming with clues to the story within.
Once inside the book, Victorian-era Australia comes alive in vivid descriptions of both the beautiful and the ugly – of Eliza’s father’s study and the objects within that spark her memories and the harsh, Western Australian desert where the dust is inescapable.
Eliza is a fantastic and complex character. She’s a woman of intelligence, but this brings her up against the restrictions placed on her because of her sex, and also into opposition with the women of Bannin Bay, with whom she is unable to fit in. She carries a huge amount of guilt for events in her past, but perhaps her search for her father can free her of this guilt.
The background of the novel, its setting among the Australian pearl industry, is completely new to me, so it was interesting to find out more about it – the beauty and value of natural pearls, weighed up against the human cost of the industry. There’s much more to read about this!
The main focus of the book is Eliza’s father’s disappearance, and the mystery there unravels in unpredictable ways, but there are so many layers to this book; family, colonialism, racism, feminism all weave seemlessly into the story with such a delicate hand, it’s incredible that this is a debut novel!
Once inside the book, Victorian-era Australia comes alive in vivid descriptions of both the beautiful and the ugly – of Eliza’s father’s study and the objects within that spark her memories and the harsh, Western Australian desert where the dust is inescapable.
Eliza is a fantastic and complex character. She’s a woman of intelligence, but this brings her up against the restrictions placed on her because of her sex, and also into opposition with the women of Bannin Bay, with whom she is unable to fit in. She carries a huge amount of guilt for events in her past, but perhaps her search for her father can free her of this guilt.
The background of the novel, its setting among the Australian pearl industry, is completely new to me, so it was interesting to find out more about it – the beauty and value of natural pearls, weighed up against the human cost of the industry. There’s much more to read about this!
The main focus of the book is Eliza’s father’s disappearance, and the mystery there unravels in unpredictable ways, but there are so many layers to this book; family, colonialism, racism, feminism all weave seemlessly into the story with such a delicate hand, it’s incredible that this is a debut novel!