SOURCE: A review of Mother of Pearl, in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 24, 1995, p. 6.

[In the review below, Harris explores Morrissy's emphasis on character development in Mother of Pearl.]

The Irish are inexhaustible—here comes yet another gifted writer from that buoyantly tragic isle. [With Mother of Pearl] 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. So that the tragedy, when it comes, is all the more devastating.

Irene Rivers' parents abandon her when she gets tuberculosis. 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.

The young couple who lose the...