SOURCE: A review of Mother of Pearl, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 242, No. 19, May 8, 1995, p. 283.

[In the following positive review, the critic describes Morrissy's writing in Mother of Pearl as giving off "sparks of feminist insights and gimlet humor."]

A lushly lyrical portrait of women wrestling with their inner demons, this stunning first novel [Mother of Pearl] begins in the Irish sanatorium where tubercular Irene Rivers stays from 1947 through the mid-1950s, even after she is cured. Terrified of the outside world and having been brutalized by her father, Irene endures furtive sexual encounters with fellow patients and employees while remaining a virgin; she sees her sexual ministrations as a mission of mercy. In time, Irene marries Stanley Godwin, a tender but impotent outpatient, leaves the sanatorium and becomes obsessed with having a baby, even lying to neighbors that she is pregnant. Then she kidnaps an infant girl from...