Tears of Mermaids

I don't think I would have been able to finish this book if it wasn't for the fact that I was confined in a bus that got stuck in a massive traffic jam for 27 hours going from Denpasar to Surabaya, had no other source of entertainment (phone battery tapped out), and had no other reading materials (it was the only book I brought with me).

Of course, you don't really need to know how I finished this book, but subjecting you to that information despite having no relevance whatsoever with the subject at hand is exactly like reading this book. Very often, the author would start a section/chapter by explaining his circumstances first–how he went to great length to get to the bottom of pearl production. Which only managed to give me the impression of him as a misunderstood artist, him living in a world where even his family doesn't get him.

I'm sure that this book could've been compelling (after all this is why I picked up this book: the premise was interesting and I know next to nothing about pearl or any other gemstones), but 100-pages in, I wonder if it's at all possible to write an engaging story about worldwide pearl production in more than five chapters. Afterall, the techniques were the same: you insert a bead, return the oyster to the water for several years, harvest them, and then sell them. The oysters might come from different species, which would account for the diversity of the colors and sizes, but that's about it.

I'd only recommend this book if you're familiar with the dealers and company heads in the pearl world (or if you are very interested to know about them), because in the end, this book is more about them.

I would have given this book 2 stars if it wasn't for a particular passage near the end. He recounted a story when he gave a talk on pearl, and a woman in the audience afterwards approached him to let him know that he gets pearls in a way that no one does, and how pearls gave her a spiritual connection. The author made a point of writing a paragraph “for the skeptics out there” that this woman was a perfectly rational woman that did not give off a new-age vibe. And then continued to tell her story that she did a long-distance healing over the phone to a client in Jerussalem from North America. Without irony.