Costly Things

I finished up two short books within a day of each other and didn't have time to post in between, so here I'll attempt to process them, completely different though they are, together.

The first was John Steinbeck's The Pearl. I'm fairly familiar with Steinbeck. I have read Of Mice and Men half a dozen times and The Grapes of Wrath twice. His straightforward narration and unwillingness to allow the reader to look away from the harshness of life are things I appreciate about him. He is no sentimentalist. And that quality comes out in full force in The Pearl. It's a bite-sized book, even shorter than Of Mice and Men, based on a Mexican fable about a pearl diver and his family. The impoverished man, Kino, finds a pearl beyond value one day, and it changes his life and his community forever.

The second book was Flora and Ulysses, a middle-grade book by Kate DiCamillo. It's a bit younger than I normally go in my young adult reading, but it was on a recommended list I recently looked at, and DiCamillo is well-known as a quality storyteller. That's ultimately what I care about, no matter the audience for what I'm reading. Flora and Ulysses is the story of 10-year-old Flora, whose parents are divorced, and who is a self-professed cynic. She finds a squirrel that her neighbor accidentally sucked up in a vacuum and that has subsequently developed superpowers (flying, super strength, etc). Flora names him Ulysses (the brand of the vacuum) and declares herself his sidekick. Many micro-adventures ensue, as Flora tries to find her place in her newly restructured family.

These books really have nothing in common. I liked Flora and Ulysses better because it had what all great young adult books have: kids with real problems but not an especially realistic perception of the world, quirky adult supporting characters who ring true to the grown-ups in the room but are seen through the eyes of kids, and a satisfying resolution in which problems both real and imagined are solved believably. At first the book felt a little dark to me, but I came to appreciate Flora's love of superheroes and need to experience adventure. There was an element of fantasy with Ulysses, who is able to type words on a typewriter, but ultimately that didn't take away from the story as a whole. Overall, I highly recommend this book to the 10-year-old in your life.

The Pearl was pretty dark from start to finish. Steinbeck doesn't mince words, so very quickly Kino finds the pearl, tries to sell it but isn't happy with the offered prices, kills a man who tries to steal it, and then goes on the run with his wife and infant son. Their journey through the desert, pursued by trackers, is harrowing to read about, brief though it may be. Kino's efforts to fend off the trackers result in his son's death, and the story ends without much hope or redemption. It's a fable, so the moral of the story is, don't allow greed to overtake you, or you will lose everything.

The thing that I think will make The Pearl stick with me, though, was the similarities I saw to one of Jesus's parables. He tells the story of the pearl of great price, and the man who goes and sells everything he has to buy the field where the pearl is buried, so that he may have it forever. I like to look for Jesus in the characters he talks about, and that parable communicates the truth that Jesus would sell everything he had, did sell everything he had, to rescue you and me. It's a striking parallel: Kino sacrifices his son's life for a pearl of great price, and all he receives in return is heartache. God, meanwhile, sacrifices his son's life for a pearl of great price, us, and the redemption of the whole world results. That's a moral I can hold on to.