Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Teaser Tuesday 368: The Pearl

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current book or recent read.
* Share a few "teaser" sentences from somewhere in the book.
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (Make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away. You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title and author so that other participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teaser!



This week's teaser comes from a short classic novel by John Steinbeck called The Pearl.



Kino moved to the next hummock, and then, beside it, under a little overhang, he saw a very large oyster lying by itself, not covered with its clinging brothers. The shell was partly open, for the overhang protected this ancient oyster, and in the lip-like muscle Kino saw a ghostly gleam, and then the shell closed down.

(Chapter 2)




ABOUT THE BOOK:

From the author of Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck's The Pearl is a flawless parable based on an old Mexican folk tale about wealth and the evil it can bring.

When Kino, an Indian pearl-diver, finds 'the Pearl of the world' he believes that his life will be magically transformed. He will marry Juana in church and their little boy, Coyotito, will be able to attend school. Obsessed by his dreams, Kino is blind to the greed, fear and even violence the pearl arouses in him and his neighbours. Written with haunting simplicity and lyrical simplicity, The Pearl sets the values of the civilized world against those of the primitive and finds them tragically inadequate.

Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America's greatest writers and cultural figures.



2 comments:

Alice Audrey said...

I remember reading that a loooooong time ago.

Heather said...

Never read this in school, but did enjoy it, though the ending is heartbreaking.