This book felt derivative and overwrought. I really only kept reading to find out why mom chopped her finger off. I felt like it fetishized women's friendships, as even better books sometimes do (Secrets of the Ya-ya Sisterhood, etc.). I've never really understood that. I grew up in a family of all girls, and at any given time, 80-100% of my friends have been other women, but I don't see making a religion out of it, complete with arcane rituals and cultish secrecy. I was also annoyed by the whole love story, which probably isn't the emotion the author was trying to elicit from me. They had, what, a grand total of five minutes of conversation over three different encounters before the were confessing their love and betraying all sorts of vows? And yes, falling in love is much more exciting that loving your husband once the hormones wear off, which is why people like Elizabeth Taylor and a few less famous folks keep thinking, "This time it's for real!" But nobody with common sense really thinks marriage is about the great sex you have when your body is releasing all those chemicals, even though it's sure a fun way to start off. And don't get me started on the folksy island Gullah stories, or the out-of-nowhere solution to the book's central mysteries.

This book is in the middle of an almost favorite to favorite book. I just loved how it was written and the story itself was really really good. It made me cry and thought me a lot about change, love, forgiveness and also about SELF-DISCOVERY. This is a woman's book, a mommy book and I loved it. However, it was hard for me to accept that the woman is having an affair with a Benedictine MONK. I'm a Catholic and was educated in a Benedictine school. I'm not usually conservative when it comes to stories and plots but it was really hard to swallow. What I do is pretend that Whit was a fisherman and not a monk. It was just to weird for me, but its a good book nonetheless. If you have an open-mind, you might love it.

Read this book as it was a selection for my book club.

Although I thoroughly enjoyed "The Secret Life Of Bees" by the same writer, I found this book to be a far different sort of read. In Bees, while I enjoyed the plot, it was the characters that I found myself hooked to. In "The Mermaid Chair" I found the plot to be only mildly entertaining and the characters lacking in development. The main character I found to be whiny, annoying, selfish, and someone I just couldn't connect to on any level. The other characters (Whit, Nelle, Hepzibah, Kat, and Benne) left me disappointed as well, although I did like them more than the protagonist. The latter characters had the potential for being interesting and moving, but still we weren't really allowed to connect to them as the reader, as we didn't get to see them enough. Whit (Brother Thomas) was the most developed of them all, in that you got to see his turmoil over his decision to enter to monestary, but the others were left 2 dimentional.

The narration also bothered me. The protagonist was the only character presented to us in the first person. The other narrator's perspectives (Whit and Hugh) were told in the 3rd person. This errked me in that I feel I MAY have been able to connect a little more with the protagonist's plight had the narration been 3rd person. Being 1st, she came across as I stated above: whiny, annoying, and selfish.

If anyone wants my copy of the book they are welcome to it. It’s not one I will recommend to anyone and certainly one I won’t reread in the future.

I bought this book when I went with my mother to go hear Sue Monk Kidd speak. Let me tell you, she speaks as eloquently as she writes. She's also just as witty. After hearing her speak, I realized that a lot of her personality comes through in her writing. Her amazing writing.

She spoke of how she felt The Mermaid Chair was going to be often compared to The Secret Life of Bees and maybe wouldn't be able to live up to the high praise it's earned so far. She also worried about the characters being too similar. I don't think Sue has anything to worry about. The only thing the two books have in common is the author's writing... a beautiful, flowing and engaging style.

I think I like Sue's style so much because it has the right amount of description for things, her dialogue is realistic, and when you think about it her stories seem so outlandish, but when reading it you can see it actually happening. Her writing is also very eloquent and deep, but fun and witty at the same time.

There are no characters in The Mermaid Chair that are reminiscent of any in The Secret Life of Bees, and specifically what Kidd was worried about was people might roll there eyes at another pack of strong female characters taking presidence in the book. I didn't and don't see any problem in that. We need as many strong literary female characters as we can get. And these women, that you grow to love, are as strong as they come.

The way the love story was written out was also so wonderful. You find yourself feeling for Jessie's dilemna of being in love with two men. Kidd doesn't write it so you're leaning towards one man over the other (well, you may be, but it's honestly hard to choose) because both men are so likeable and good-looking and genuinely care for Jessie. And though Hugh is the only one painted as having any flaws, they're pointed out to us by Jessie who, after twenty years of marriage, has come to find some things he does annoying, which she later comes to realize (and we know) are more endearing.

Personally, I liked The Secret Life of Bees over The Mermaid Chair because I just found that one more interesting... but The Mermaid Chair was just as engaging and well-written as it's predecessor. It's really up to you to choose which one you like better. The Mermaid Chair definitely holds it's own.

Very disappointed in this book since I loved "The Secret Life of Bees". The best thing I can say about it is that it is highly readable...an easy summer read. I believe in lust at first site, a spark that makes you want to get to know someone, etc. No matter how hard I tried, I could not wrap myself around the decision of a woman to leave a husband of 20 years and a monk to turn his back on the monastery on the basis of a first glance after which both proclaimed being in love. And if you can't buy into this, then you can't buy into the book. Also, the women characters engage in silly symbolic gestures, the kind that you enjoy at age 10. The author does not let you glean any meaning for yourself. She describes her paintings and then points out their (very) obvious psychological interpretations. I don't think she gives her readers much credit. If a reader wants a simple summer read and finds a forbidden romance titillating, this is the book for you. I would pass, however, if I had it to do again.

Just starting this tonight so will update soon, hopefully will enjoy it as enjoyed her other book The Secret Life of Bee's.. Well I had seen many great reviews of this book and between them and her first book I read I expected this one to be just as great! Though I've found it harder to get in to this one.. bc of liking the author and not completely disliking the book I persisted with it and am glad to say I'm liking it more.. Not confident to say that this will be book of the month though.. Ok so I made it through 30% of this book which sucks I know but I just couldn't read it anymore. I've not had to this for a while really so it is pretty hard but.. So many books.. Not enough time!! Right? I know you all get what I'm talking about.

I am conflicted about whether to give this book one star or five stars. Kidd has her main character say, "I guess I mean art should evoke some kind of reaction in a person, not just look beautiful." She certainly evoked a reaction in me!
The main character, Jessie Sullivan, is a 42-year-old woman who feels stifled in her marriage; she has become "molded to the smallest space possible." "My life had started to feel so stagnant, like it was atrophied. Everything shrunk down to the roles I played." So when her mother seems to be having a psychotic episode, she leaves her husband Hugh at home (who is a psychiatrist and a kind man, hello? wouldn't he have been helpful?), goes back to her childhood home on Egret Island, and immediately falls in love with a novitiate monk. She says, "There was no assertion of will when it came to falling in love. The heart did what it did. It had its own autonomy, like a country unto itself." Ha! I don't believe that. . . falling in love at first sight? She maybe fell in lust but she didn't fall in love. I was put off by Jessie, really frustrated that she would give up her marriage so easily. She says her essential problem with her husband Hugh is not that they have grown apart, but that they have grown "too much together." What? It made me want to scream. Here's another comment from another character that I hated: "I'd been married twenty years. Twenty. Which is about when the marriage glue gets so old it starts to harden and crack." I didn't like marriage being treated so disposably.
By contrast, in the novel three wonderful and eccentric women, one of whom is Jessie's mother, made a pack to bind their lives together by twisting three strands of yarn, one for each women, and tossing it into the ocean on one of their May Day All-Girls-Picnics. And they are wonderful, supportive, good friends. Later in the novel, a monk says about living in a monastery that "the whole point of existing here with these curmudgeonly old men [was that:] somewhere on the face of the earth, there needed to be people bound together with irrevocable stamina, figuring out a way to live with one another." Why isn't that binding true of a marriage relationship?
Five stars would have to be because of the wonderful writing and imagery. The storyline is compelling. Jessie's mother's craziness is linked somehow to losing her beloved husband in a boating accident years before when Jessie was a child, and Jessie (in addition to her affair!) is trying to help figure out how to help her. There are wonderful characters, good people, great ideas phrased beautifully. I think this book would make a spirited book club discussion about love and life and marriage. I actually was satisfied with the ending even though I fought against judging the main character. Her husband said, after learning of her affair, that "he didn't want to bring the grace of understanding" into her reasons for leaving him. I didn't either. But there were no bad guys in the story, just difficult situations, personal growth, and learning about yourself. Let me end with one lovely quote that shows the five-star nature of the author's writing: Life "truly is enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them."

The only reason that I finished this book is because it was for one of my book clubs. The romance between Jessie and the other person was perhaps realistic but her descriptions of their relationship and her feelings were YA at the best IMO.

The only redeeming part of the book and that made me rate it a 2 instead of a 1 was the backstory between Jessie and her father.

I couldn't quite give it a three. Although I do respect the author's attempt at trying to immerse us in her lead character's head as the wife who seemingly has it all decides she needs to make amends with her past and stretch her wings. It is hard work creating a sympathetic character who selfishly hurts the ones she is supposed to love. Sue Monk Kidd didn't succeed with Jessie. I really tried to give Jessie the benefit of the doubt but this middle-aged woman came off as maniacally selfish and naive as an eighteen-year-old. I really hated how she treated her husband (I actually thought Sue did a decent job crafting his caring, yet clinically detached character) and left her daughter in the dark. I didn't like how Jessie arrived back home to supposedly assist her mom deal with her morbid pattern of hacking off digits, but mainly ignored her mom and obsessed about herself. The relationship with the monk was beyond belief and uncomfortably Harlequin romancy. Ugh.

And it doesn't help that The Secret Life of Bees was so damn good. This book is not in the same league. Sorry, Sue. I know writing books is hard. Better luck next time!

I felt that I could thoroughly relate to this story of a woman waking up one day to realize that the life she has constructed for herself through 20 years of marriage - good wife, loving mother, etc. - is generic and empty. As she muses at the outset of the novel, Jessie Sullivan has lived for over 40 years and "never done anything extrordinary." This sentiment resonated with me because I believe that many of us have such feelings as we approach mid-life. It is the basis of the mid-life crisis. In this context, I did not have a difficult time accepting her affair with Brother Thomas. I understood that she had felt smothered in her role of housewife, confused by her newly-shed role of mother (her daughter had just started college), and needed some authentic experiences of her own to revive her. She later gained perspective on what she had done, the selfishness of her actions, the hurt she caused in others, and accepted ownership of it all. I did not dislike her, but found her to be a "real" person.

The writing in this novel is stunning, with beautiful island descriptions, tales of mermaid mythology and ritual, and wonderful, realistic internal and external dialogue. I listened to this novel on audiotape, and perhaps that heightened my experience, but I felt that I could picture the island, Jessie's home in Atlanta, her paintings, the estuaries and everything else described. Sue Monk Kidd's powers of description are phenomenal.

Well this bored me to tears. Empty pointless story. It had slight potential but it seemed the author was not skilled enough to get anywhere near pulling it off. It was so bad that it made me wonder if a ghostwriter was used for The Secret Life of Bees, I just can't fathom how these are written by the same person.

With touches of Southern Gothic, this one had most of what I enjoy including psychological angles, family dynamics, and religious insights. I cried, several times, toward the end. Extra star for that!