This book is great for women in their 30’s and 40’s who have lived a little, women who have married, and had their relationship grow a bit stale over time. This is the story of Jessie Sullivan, how she returns home to help her mother get through a strange ‘accident’ (she purposefully maimed herself), and how she falls in love with a monk. How does their tempestuous relationship resolve itself? Does he leave the monastery? Does she leave her devoted husband? Does her mother resolve her issues? All of these questions are answered in the course of reading this novel which is not at all a sequel to the Bees.

Jessie, the main character in the book, is having her mid-life crisis. In a big way. The book is written mostly from her point of view and begins with a statement (and I am paraphrasing b/c I don't have the book in front of me) that when she was above all else the mother to Dee and wife to Hugh, she fell in love with a benedictine monk. So, right off the bat, I was thinking "Ok. This woman has some issues she is going to have to go through if she is mainly identifying herself through the roles others see her playing...wife, mother." But, I never really understood why she was compelled to do some of the things she does, like actually have the affair, or push her mother to the All Girls picnic, or chase after the ducks in the mud. And, the first time she sees Brother Thomas, she is in love. I just find that hard to fathom...a 40-something in that love/lust phase of tweeners. But falling head-over-heels after one conversation with someone just did not make sense to me. Maybe when I am a 40-something, it will be more apparent or easy to comprehend. There was just a lot in this book that seemed rambling to me. A lot of it was her describing her path of self discovery which could have been very cool but the writing would start out with ... (again, paraphrasing)..."I don't know how to put it into words what I was feeling" Then, go on for (what seemed like) pages of description about, well, what she was feeling. It just kind of seemed like a cop out of a writing technique. But, towards about 3/4 of the way through the book, I kind of begain to understand the why's and the who's so am glad I stuck with it. I don't think it was really love with Brother Thomas, just the need to take a break from the monotony of her 'real' life and to feel something - anything - again. So, all in all, I liked it well enough, just was not blown away.

3.5 rating

The Mermaid Chair is a re-read for me. I read it many years ago before I had a Goodreads account.

I love how comforting this story is. It's set on the coast of South Carolina in a made-up town called, Egret Island. As a girl who grew up in Savannah, GA on the marsh, I enjoyed all the references to the animals and people who live near the marshlands.

Having read 2 other books from Sue Monk Kidd and rating those 5 stars, I was keen to read this book but was left very disappointed.

The story follows Jessie, as she travels back to the island she grew up on to try and help her mother after she cut off her own finger. The theme is about Jessie’s ‘finding herself’ after her daughter has moved away and her relationship with her husband becomes stagnant. She is at the point in her life when she needs and welcomes some excitement and also finds that she needs to discover more about the mysterious death of her Father when she was a child. There are some religious issues raised and this book also seems to resonate with women of a certain age that have had similar experiences as Jessie.

I’m not sure if I missed the point, or if I am too young, or if it’s because I don’t have children but I really didn’t understand why things happened the way that they did. I liked the characters and enjoyed the writing. I followed the storyline and enjoyed the book as a read but it didn’t ‘connect’ with me. I cared what happened enough to finish the book but didn’t find myself excited by what I was reading. I guess this book was just not for me.

I should know better than to pick up a book whose back cover blurb begins "Forty-two, and married for half her life, Jessie Sullivan honestly believes that she is happy...."

Ummm okay, let me see, without reading any more or opening to the first page... I'll guess: A crisis of some magnitude or other will occur, the result of which will find "Jessie" re-analysing everything she's previously taken for granted about her life, most particularly about herself. She'll realise she's been stifled all her adult life, denying her own happiness and passion in order to ensure that the dreams of her husband and family can be fulfilled. The ensuing identity crisis will inevitably see Jessie propelled headlong into an affair with a dark, damaged much younger young lover, from which she will emerge tainted but not destroyed. And for a bonus point I'll guess that in the end she'll realise that she actually does love her husband afterall, and when all is said and done they'll begin the difficult job of putting their lives back together again.

Since the author is Sue Monk Kidd, whose book "The Secret Life of Bees" seems to be beloved by all, I actually thought that my snap prediction would be way off the mark. In my defense, that's the only reason I bought it. I expected a few surprises to this predictable framework, a curve ball at the last minute perhaps. Sadly, it's not to be. The only thing that comes close is the very bizarre gothic tendency (SPOILER ALERT!!!) Jessie's mother has to chopping off her own fingers. That's really quite freaky. Other than that, my predictions were spot on.

Boring as hell.

This book was really well written and compelling like all of Sue Monke Kidd's books, it's a novel about a womens sort of, coming of middle age, facing her troubled childhood, and falling in love in order to preserve the spark of energy that once lived inside her. i liked this book, but the thing that pissed me off about it was that it was still in some sort a coming of age novel about finding your true self or some shit like that. i mean the book was well thought out and everything but are coming of age novels the only thing in old Sue's repertoire... I'd like to see something new from her before she kicks the csn as they say lol.

Struggled between 2 and 3 stars with this but I think in general I am overly generous with my stars and this is my first step toward nipping that in the bud. They're stars, for crying out loud. All celestial and what-not. They shouldn't be meted out lightly, people!

For me the best part of this book, and really the only part that didn't frustrate the ever loving hell out of me, were Kidd's descriptions of the South Carolinian barrier island which served as backdrop to this fairly ridiculous love story. Oh, and I use the word 'love' with great reluctance b/c believe me, it is bandied about in the book with absolute carelessness! Kidd was really very good in detailing the flora and fauna of the island and created a rather amazing picture. A portrait that made me actually want to visit such a place.

Given my appreciation for her imagery, it's pretty obvious what I thought of the remainder of Kidd's work - hello, two stars. Here are some words in an attempt to summarize: implausible, utterly predictable, overwrought, hackneyed...I think that's more than enough. It's not that I don't have an appreciation for the idea Kidd was presenting - just not a fan of her execution.

I wasn't much for her first novel, 'The Secret Life of Bees' and suppose I should have figured it out with that one. I have now.

I loved "The Secret Life of Bees" so I was excited to start on this book of Sue's.

I was so disappointed. Half way through I had to just quit reading this. Not only do I care not a whit for the characters, and the affair with the monk hasn't even truly begun, but this whole catholicism centered around a mermaid/saint is just irritating to me.

How did Sue get this one so wrong? Nothing is happening and I just want the husband to come and carry his wife home, after committing his mother-in-law (minus one finger) to a secure facility!

Save yourself the time and don't bother reading this one.

In the winter of 1988, 42-year-old Jessie Sullivan returns to her childhood home, Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina. Her mother has unexplainably and deliberately chopped off her own finger, and Jessie hurries home to be with her. In the process, Jessie must come to grips with the repercussions from her father's death thirty-three years previously and her own lackluster marriage. Jessie finds herself drawn to a Benedictine monk, Brother Thomas, who lives in the island's abbey and engages in an affair with him. Only when her mother chops off another finger does the truth her mother has carried hidden for many years come out, and Jessie is able to put her life back together. Through it all, Jessie learns that she must be true to herself in order to become her most fulfilled self.

I gave the novel four stars instead of five because I found the middle section difficult. I had difficulty relating to the characters of Jessie and Brother Thomas in this section and the choices they were making. But Sue Monk Kidd is a gifted writer, and tied everything together into a seamless whole. I felt the ending was perfect, exactly right for all of the characters. I also related to her theme of discovering and honoring oneself, sometimes through a "solitude of being", which in turn enables one to be a better partner in a relationship.

The Mermaid Chair ranks extremely high on my list of all-time favorite books. It's the second book by Sue Monk Kidd, who thrilled readers with her first book, "The Secret Life of Bees". Jessie Sullivan is leading a "normal" life with her rather boring husband Hugh when she is called home to Egret Island to see what's up with her mother, who has reportedly been exhibiting some very odd behavior. Once there, she is drawn to a beautifully carved chair which resides inside the Benedictin monastery. The chair is carved with mermaids. The chair, it is said, is dedicated to a saint who was a mermaid before her conversion. On the Island, Jessie is also unexpectedly drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk. Are mermaids real? Jessie finds herself drawn in to the island's mysteries, all the while trying to figure out what is going on with mother, and what to do about her attraction to Brother Thomas, despite her love for Hugh. I didn't read this book. I devoured it.

This probably isn't the best time to write a review of this book since I just finished it a few hours ago and am still quite upset by it. The reason I began the book was because of the name, first of all, and also the story takes place on an island right off the coast of South Carolina. I grew up in South Carolina and miss it very much and so I started reading.

The first part of the book dragged a little, although I loved the descriptions of the south and the ocean. As the book picked up I began to feel torn as to whether or not I was disgusted by the main character or recognized parts of my past self in her. Perhaps a little of both. While I've finished the book and restrained myself from throwing it across the room (I did check it out from the library afterall), I find myself questioning the strength of marriage and trust...once again.

I dog-eared a few pages that I felt were simply poetic. Here is one of those quotes that I particularly appreciate.

"These paroxysms were, I realized later, a kind of aftershock. They would come and go for weeks, moments of violent disorientation in which I couldn't recognize myself, completely breaking apart how I understood my life, all the joints and couplings that held it together. It was the peculiar vertigo, the peculiar humility, that comes from realizing what you are really capable of. Those aftershocks would gradually taper off, but in the beginning they could almost paralyze me." p.201

I've rated Sue Monk Kidd's second novel "The Mermaid Chair" five stars, because I don't know how better to express the depth of liking I have for this book, reviewed here immediately after I finished reading it for the second time.

Perhaps it resonates so strongly for me because it's about a woman (Jessie) with a Catholic background who lost her beloved father years earlier than she should have. While there is not a lot else I can identify with (and my Dad was 70, after all) the emotional turmoil Jessie suffers, the conflicts of belief and rationality, certainly ring true for me. Put it this way, when Jessie cries for her long lost father towards the end of the novel, I cried for mine too.

Jessie is married to a psychiatrist, Hugh, with a daughter away at college. Already suffering from what could too-simply be described as 'empty nest syndrome' in a marriage that has grown stale, she is summoned home to Egret Island, one of the barrier islands off the Carolina coast.

Her mother has done something completely inexplicable, and Jessie has been called by her mother's friends back to the island where she grew up, and where her father died.

But that brief synopsis does not begin to describe the power of this beautiful story to move the reader. Most of the novel is told in first-person narrative by Jessie, with some chapters being a third person account of the novice monk she meets on the island - Brother Thomas.

I don't want to spoil the story for anyone who hasn't yet read it, but let me just say that if you have a longing for salt-sea breezes, sand between your toes, beach flotsam, mermaid tales and the lives of obscure saints, you'll find all that and more in The Mermaid Chair.