The Pearl Diver, by Jeff Talarigo, tells the story of a young woman only known to the audience as "Miss Fuji," who lives on an island for those afflicted with leprosy. She is responsible for assisting some of the background characters who live on the island with her by reporting numbers of dismembered limbs and offering massages. Though Miss Fuji is relatively healthy in comparison to the other island wards, she is not permitted to leave. She is joined by a small crew of auxiliary characters, including Chikako, Yurika, Yoko, Mariko, and Miyako.
Miss Fuji devotes most of her time to others, and she loses her original identity by donning the pseudonym of "Miss Fuji." However, the young woman remains calm and uses the small moments she has to herself to explore the island. She understands the ostracization that she and the other lepers face but holds onto the hope that there will soon be a cure for both the illness and the stigma.
There is not much characterization of characters outside of "Miss Fuji," and dialogue in the story is both rare and short-lived.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/124831.The_Pearl_Diver
https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-51051-6
The pearl diver is known only to readers by the name she is given at the sanitarium for lepers, "Miss Fuji."
Prior to her arrival at the sanitarium, as a teenager, she is often accompanied by an old man, Kenichi, who pilots the boat to the places where she dives and looks after her. There are other younger divers like herself, Yoko, Chikako, Mariko, Yurika, and an older woman diver, Miyako, who functions as a grandmother to the younger women.
Because the novel's development does not depend on the characterization of anyone besides Miss Fuji, there is not an abundance of dialogue. And since the dialogue is spare, what is said is often filled with import. At the sanitarium, Miss Fuji transcribes words that Mr. Shikagawa, a fellow sufferer, records onto cassettes. He observes that "words are the most important thing we have."
The protagonist of the novel The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo is a young woman living off of the coast of Japan and working as a pearl diver. At nineteen, she discovers that she has leprosy. The other background characters in the novel are the people living with her in the colony of lepers on the island of Nagashima, where she moves to once she learns of her disease. On the island, the protagonist embarks on a new life, and the other colony members give her the new name "Miss Fuji". Miss Fuji works as a nurse for the other colonists and becomes closely intertwined with their lives.
https://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-pearl-diver/
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