Mary Gordon

In her essays, memoir, and novels, Gordon is not one to shy away from either the deeply philosophical or the overtly feminist. Her latest novel revolves around Pearl Meyers, a twenty-year-old American student in Dublin, who has chained her emaciated body to a flagpole, protesting the violence in a land where religion and politics are matters of life and death. Maria, her mother, arrives from New York to try to prevent Pearl’s totafamesuicaedist—suicide by famine. Hopes for Pearl’s salvation, like Ireland’s hopes for peace, give way to philosophical contemplation about forgiveness, compassion, sacrifice, and other big ideas.