The Book of Pearl by Timothée de Fombelle (review)

As a runaway boy barely into his teens, the narrator could not yet discern that the girl who broke his heart was a fairy, and that he would, as an adult, become the chronicler of an even stranger tale of cursed lovers banished from storybook lands. Joshua Pearl, a recluse who nursed the unnamed runaway back to health, had a house full of suitcases and mysteries and a singular mission to return to the kingdom from which he had been exiled by his murderous brother, but it would take the narrator years to discover that he and his erstwhile host had loved the same fairy, and that he would personally play a role in reuniting Iliån (Joshua’s true name) and the fairy Oliå in their homeland. This beautifully realized novel is wide ranging and structurally complex, spanning Iliån’s tragic domestic backstory, his struggle to remember his storybook world roots, and his maturation during World War II. Iliån’s story lies at the heart of the plot, but as it flashes forward and backward, entangling with the tales of Oliå, his adoptive parents, his usurper brother, and the narrator himself, the reader reconstructs the whole through flashes and glimmers as teasing and fleeting as the fairy who flits along its edges. From textbook history and familiar fairy-tale motifs, de Fombelle creates a haunting, sophisticated adventure that leads readers through a fascinating labyrinth to its bittersweet ending.