The Pearl Thief

For me, Elizabeth Wein is one of those writers who could put down a grocery list and I would end up raptly attuned and waiting for more. I suspected I would like this book. In fact, it's up there with I Capture the Castle for hugely comforting, deeply halcyon reads. I just loved it -- loved the subject of leaving a dearly held place and growing up. Loved the careless, deep, rambling friendships. Loved the exploration and the mysteries and the setting and the caustic moments when Ellen calls Julie out. Loved that the book doesn't shy away from the terrible treatment of Traveler communities. I never knew that river pearls even existed, or that there is a library in the middle of a river -- fascinated at all the little details.

The Pearl Thief is a prequel to Elizabeth Wein’s brilliant Code Name Verity. I can imagine that it would work perfectly well as a standalone, but a lot of its poignancy comes from knowing what happens later. If one read The Pearl Thief without having read, or immediately reading, Code Name Verity, then one wouldn’t be able to appreciate some of the foreshadowing nor the significance of getting to fill in some gaps about Julie and her family. That was what I loved most about it.

One of the earliest events recounted in Code Name Verity is about Maddie in the summer of 1938; The Pearl Thief is about what Julie did during that summer before the war.

She returns from boarding school to the recently-sold estate of her late grandfather. show more While her mother and grandmother sort through the estate’s effects and workmen prepare for the place to become a school, Julie and her brother Jamie make friends with the Scottish travellers staying nearby, and become caught up in a mystery of a missing scholar. It’s a summer of loss, change, discovery, prejudice and playing detective. Julie is nearly 16, and is unmistakably a younger version of the person we meet in Code Name Verity.

The Pearl Thief is engaging, nuanced and occasionally uncomfortable coming-of-age story. It is, unsurprisingly, more straightforward Code Name Verity, but still has its twists.

I sat down on the flat sun-dappled rock slab where the wounded poacher had rested, and where Granddad had taught me and my brothers to guddle for trout. I wondered if I could still catch a fish using only my hands. No one was about, not even the heron, and I was overcome with a wave of sadness over my grandfather and his house and his things that weren’t ours anymore, and all the summers that would never come back. show less

Part of the cycle of loosely-tied together novels about women during World War II, The Pearl Thief acts as a prequel to Code Name Verity. The novel's protagonist is Julie Beaufort-Stuart, the Scottish aristocrat who is one of the two main characters of the earlier novel, and is set one year prior to the war when she is just 15. She returns home her family estate from boarding school to find herself embroiled in a mystery regarding the disappearance of a scholar working with artifacts recovered from their property.

Julie is a great character, impulsive and bold that make her stand out among the staid expectations of her time and class. Much of the novel explores her new friendship with the siblings Ellen and Euan McEwen, who are members show more of Highland Travellers' community that camp nearby. The trio get into many adventures, and they encounter much prejudice against the Travelers (which Julie attempts to shield with her privilege). The book also explores Julie's romantic attraction to Ellen and to an older man named Richard revealing her burgeoning sexuality (and hooray for bisexual representation!).

This is the first book by Elizabeth Wein that I don't love, but it is a great character study even if I found the narrative to be a bit slight. show less

I’ll start off, up front, by saying The Pearl Thief by Elizabeth Wein is a great book. But who would expect less from the author of Code Name Verity and Rose Under Fire.

Fifteen year old Lady Julia Lindsay MacKenzie Wallace Beaufort-Stuart has returned home for summer break to help her mother and grandmother pack up their household. Her grandfather’s recent death and the realization that they had lost their fortune forced them to sell their centuries old castle, Strathfearn, near Perth, Scotland to a school and construction was under way to convert the house and property to its new use. On her first day home, lying on Drookit Stane, a standing stone in the River Fearn, she is hit over the head and is unconscious for several days. show more Euen McEwen, a Traveller, a nomadic Scottish group, found her and brought her to the hospital.

Simultaneously, Professor Hugh Housman who was cataloging the antiquities of the household, mysteriously disappears. Julia remembers seeing him in the river, naked, prior to being clonked on the head and many feared that he had drowned, either on purpose (since his advances were recently rebuffed by Solange, Julia’s governess) or by accident.

The Pearl Thief is an amazing story combining Scottish folklore with a coming of age story with a little history with a small mystery. It takes place during the summer of 1938. The Travelers or Tinkers as they’re called (since many sell tin and other metals), are similar to gypsies and have that same derogatory connotation. They are not well regarded by the Scots yet have a long history in the land. The McEwens, especially, were friends with the Stuarts and Julia’s and Euen’s mothers played together as young children.

Wein contrasts the ‘haves’ of Julia’s upper crust gentry status with the ‘have nots’ the McEwens who live from day to day, traveling to where there is work, typically farming. Yet it is the Travelers whose philosophy it is that it is better to give than to receive.

Part of the pleasure of reading Elizabeth Wein is her descriptions–of the land, the history, the mythology. Her story traps you and her language reels you in. I can’t give this book and Wein’s other young adult books, enough accolades. One of the best books I've read this year. show less

i took eight hundred years to read this because i started it, only got about two chapters in, and then didn't want it to ever end, and also, got busy and didn't actually read anything. then, i plowed through it in about four hours on a train ride home.

thank GOD it didn't make me cry as hard as code name verity, because i was in public.

it was lovely though. and aching, to already know what ends up happening to julie and jamie and co. i went into this already loving julie with my whole heart, and somehow, managed to end up loving her ever more. also!!! sort of basically confirmed queerness for julie!!!!??? as a queer girl myself, who ADORED julie and maddie's relationship (both platonically and romantically in my dreams) that was show more AMAZING. and i adored ellen almost as much as maddie and julie.

i don't know, i probably could manage to sit down and say something eloquent about it if i really tried, but mostly i just LOVE JULIA MURRAY BEAUFORT-STUART WITH MY WHOLE HEART AND AM TERRIBLY SAD ABOUT EVERYTHING. show less

Spoilers for Code Name Verity!

Aaaaaaugh it is hard to read this book knowing what we know about the near future of the main character, but we also see how she becomes Verity, or rather how some of her character gets formed (and we hear how she comes to be called Queenie, in a moment so lovely and painful that I cried, knowing what was to come). And we get some answers about Julie's sexual orientation too. The mystery in the book has a few twists and turns, and it's interesting - complex, with several different layers of Scottish history playing a big part, and a couple of twists one might not have expected unless one were paying rather close attention (I suspected one of them from the beginning but not quite in the way that it show more happened). Anyway, good prequel, with new characters and new issues to consider, including things I didn't know about Scotland. And all of it with the drumbeat of onrushing war (at least for those of us watching from the future). show less

This is my first foray into Elizabeth Wein’s writing and I really liked it. The Pearl Thief is a prequel to Code Name Verity, set in pre-war Perthshire and full of such interesting characters. There are multiple mysteries fighting among themselves in this book, all of which are somehow linked together: our main character attacked by an unknown assailant at the very start, a missing man and the importance of river pearls. I thoroughly enjoyed unlocking the mystery with Julie as she regained her memory in bits and pieces. The setting of this big country house surrounded by beautiful Scottish countryside and rivers was written so wonderfully that I had no problem picturing it in my mind’s eye. I found the constant persecution of the show more Scottish Travellers to be very topical and the inclusion of this ethnic group added an interesting layer of diversity to the story. There is even some discussion on sexual orientation, which would have been a tricky topic to navigate in the late 1930s. What I found truly fascinating was the amount of history in this book - fictional history of the characters’ families but also the ancient artifacts that were buried in the river beds. Running alongside all the mysteries, these histories made the story incredibly compelling and hard to put down. One of the only things that I found to be distracting was the high usage of slang that wasn’t always explained to the reader. Most of the words were easy to translate, but there were a few that I found difficult - potentially a glossary could have helped.
To conclude, The Pearl Thief is a thoroughly engaging mystery set in a beautifully described Perthshire with a whole host of interesting characters. Definitely one to check out. show less