SOURCE: A review of Mother of Pearl, in Belles Letires: A Review of Books by Women, Vol. 11, No. 1, January, 1996, p. 47.

[In the review below, Middleton examines Morrissy's focus on memory and the past's effect on the present in Mother of Pearl.]

This first novel [Mother of Pearl] is a painfully deep exploration of the power of memory—particularly childhood memory—to color and define a life. A tubercular child banished to a sanitorium, Irene Rivers decides early that "there was no God; there was only sickness and health." The patients and staff at Granitefield become her family until, miraculously, she is cured and then, almost as miraculously, "rescued" via marriage.

Irene's hopes for a "normal" life are dashed, however, when she learns that her new husband is impotent. Convinced that the child she deserves is "still out there … unclaimed, waiting for her mother," Irene steals a child from...