...
Show More
https://tanayahczyta.wordpress.com/20...
Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book
Community Reviews
Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
33(33%)
4 stars
39(39%)
3 stars
28(28%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
100 reviews
...
Show More
“You can't stop your heart from loving, really -- it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.”
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair
My review..9/6/2020
The Mermaid Chair was a must read for me. I fell in love..immediately..with the cover. I'd also read "The invention of wings" which I'd rated a five. I was prepared to love this. I did not.
I DID love certain aspects. By gosh, this woman can write. And she writes in a way I love. She writes about summer and islands and Mermaids. She writes of Star Fish and beautiful Sea Corral and she writes of water and tranquility. She writes of beautiful flowers and the sweetness of the Sea Spray and of tropical breezes and citrus and her writing is just..simply..heavenly.
But the subject matter..it did not do it for me. The infidelity was not the issue..not really. So what WAS the issue? Lots of things.
I did not really understand Jess. I did understand her motivation, her wanting to be free. And I understood her desire. To people who question why she needed sex to feel free..I get that. Is there anything more exciting then the first blush of pure passion? Of feeling a soul connection? I got all that and it did not offend me.
But her feelings of disdain for her husband bewildered me. Not that she was tired of him. But in certain ways, she seemed to find him repugnant and that I did not get. To question one's life..yes. But at times Jesse almost seemed to dislike him and she became so hostile toward High and so..almost contemptious..that I found it hard to understand.
Add to that:
SPOILERS:
When Jesse had the odd turnaround and wanted to go back to Hugh. It seemed to happen so suddenly. Can one really turn off one's sexuality that quickly? She LOVED this man..Brother Tom..and all of a sudden she was longing for Hugh. I GUESS this sort of thing happens. Not having ever been married maybe I just do not get it. But all of a sudden her feelings shifted toward Hugh and she loved him fiercely. Now if it had been casual between tom and her I'd have understood but she felt Tom was PART of her and her soul. It was hard to understand when all of a sudden she was literally saying the same thing about Hugh. I was a bit baffled.
Plus..the book was depressing. Really gloomy. And very New Agey. And just not in a way I liked.
I'd have adored this book if it had all been just about the island. The incredible writing, the raw and special BEAUTY of how this woman (Sue Monk Kidd) writes is vivid and beautiful. I just was not wild about the story line.
I also did not get what she said about how their love ( her and Brother Tom’s), wasn’t meant for such mundane things as washing socks or living together. Then is it really love at all? I had to wonder. Jesse's marrying herself to the sea was a little out there but I love the sea too so I could understand that. And the images of the island made me want to go there. Very mixed feelings.
And so much time was spent on the mom's story line as well as the story of her dad which broke my heart but was to painful for me to read without skimming..The book was a celebration in a way of life and living and I get that and I deeply respect some of the messages in this book. But the book as a whole was not for me.
― Sue Monk Kidd, The Mermaid Chair
My review..9/6/2020
The Mermaid Chair was a must read for me. I fell in love..immediately..with the cover. I'd also read "The invention of wings" which I'd rated a five. I was prepared to love this. I did not.
I DID love certain aspects. By gosh, this woman can write. And she writes in a way I love. She writes about summer and islands and Mermaids. She writes of Star Fish and beautiful Sea Corral and she writes of water and tranquility. She writes of beautiful flowers and the sweetness of the Sea Spray and of tropical breezes and citrus and her writing is just..simply..heavenly.
But the subject matter..it did not do it for me. The infidelity was not the issue..not really. So what WAS the issue? Lots of things.
I did not really understand Jess. I did understand her motivation, her wanting to be free. And I understood her desire. To people who question why she needed sex to feel free..I get that. Is there anything more exciting then the first blush of pure passion? Of feeling a soul connection? I got all that and it did not offend me.
But her feelings of disdain for her husband bewildered me. Not that she was tired of him. But in certain ways, she seemed to find him repugnant and that I did not get. To question one's life..yes. But at times Jesse almost seemed to dislike him and she became so hostile toward High and so..almost contemptious..that I found it hard to understand.
Add to that:
SPOILERS:
When Jesse had the odd turnaround and wanted to go back to Hugh. It seemed to happen so suddenly. Can one really turn off one's sexuality that quickly? She LOVED this man..Brother Tom..and all of a sudden she was longing for Hugh. I GUESS this sort of thing happens. Not having ever been married maybe I just do not get it. But all of a sudden her feelings shifted toward Hugh and she loved him fiercely. Now if it had been casual between tom and her I'd have understood but she felt Tom was PART of her and her soul. It was hard to understand when all of a sudden she was literally saying the same thing about Hugh. I was a bit baffled.
Plus..the book was depressing. Really gloomy. And very New Agey. And just not in a way I liked.
I'd have adored this book if it had all been just about the island. The incredible writing, the raw and special BEAUTY of how this woman (Sue Monk Kidd) writes is vivid and beautiful. I just was not wild about the story line.
I also did not get what she said about how their love ( her and Brother Tom’s), wasn’t meant for such mundane things as washing socks or living together. Then is it really love at all? I had to wonder. Jesse's marrying herself to the sea was a little out there but I love the sea too so I could understand that. And the images of the island made me want to go there. Very mixed feelings.
And so much time was spent on the mom's story line as well as the story of her dad which broke my heart but was to painful for me to read without skimming..The book was a celebration in a way of life and living and I get that and I deeply respect some of the messages in this book. But the book as a whole was not for me.
...
Show More
I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
- Pablo Neruda
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
- W. B. Yeats
This is a weird love story which could have and should have been better. The Mermaid Folklore related to Sainthood was extremely intriguing.
Favorite Passages:
They say you can bear anything if you can tell a story about it.
_______
In the end the mermaids did not save him. But I wonder if perhaps they saved me. I know this much: The mermaids came to me finally, in the pink hours of my life.
_______
When Dee was small, she'd mistakenly called the church the "Scared Heart of Mary." The two of us still referred to it that way sometimes, and it occurred to me now how apt the name really was. I mean, if Mary was still around, like so many people thought, including my insatiably Catholic mother, maybe her heart was scared. Maybe it was because she was on such a high and impossible pedestal - Consummate Monther, Good Wife, All-Around Paragon of Perfect Womanhood. She was probably up there peering over the side, wishing for a ladder, a parachute, something to get her down from there.
_______
I lay back on the bed; I felt like a tent collapsing, the center pole yanked out, followed by the billowy floating.
_______
"Jessie," she said. "The reason I called . . . Yesterday your mother cut off her finger with a meat cleaver. Her right index finger."
_______
I'd always felt that Kat harbored some knowledge about Mother that was off-limits to me, a wall with a concealed room behind it.
_______
"You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home."
_______
. . . I felt myself rise up out of that little smudge of ash, with the determination of a phoenix. I will leave here, I told myself. I will fly away.
_______
The last thing I'd expected was to stand on Hepzibah's porch and feel a seizure of love for Egret Island. And not just for the island but for the woman my mother had been, dancing around a fire.
Something struck me then: I'd never done any of those things my mother had done. Never danced on a beach. Never made a bonfire. Never waded into the ocean at night with laughing women and tied my life to theirs.
_______
I was surprised by the weight of memory, the awful contagion of family, of place.
_______
Kat slid back her foot, and we stood in the late afternoon, in a moment of perfect stillness, and stared at my mother's blood.
_______
That time Mike was eight and got his poor penis stuck in a Coke bottle while urinating into it - for reasons none of us ever understood. His penis had, shall we say, expanded somewhat after entry. Mother had tried to act concerned but broke down laughing. She told him, "Mike, go sit in your room and picture Mother Teresa, and your penis will come right out."
_______
"What happened to her finger? The one she cut off?"
"It's in a mayonnaise jar by her bed," she answered matter-of-factly.
_______
The smell of gumbo hung inside the house in thick green ropes, like something you could swing on to get across the kitchen.
_______
What would I say to her? Do you have plans to sever any more body parts? It sounded crass, horrible, but that's what I really wanted to know - whether she was a danger to herself, whether she needed committing to some place that could take care of her.
_______
He said his religion was the sea. That it was his family. He'd told Mike and me stories about a sea kingdom ruled by a gang of ruthless and snails and the brave keyhole limpets who tried to overthrow them. His imagination was ingenious.
_______
Maybe her faith in the church made up for his lack of it. My mother and father made a peculiar couple - Walt Whitman and Joan of Arc - but it'd worked. They had adored each other. I was sure of that.
_______
I closed my eyes. I felt that the centerpiece of my history had been dug up and exposed as a complete and utter fiction. It left a gaping place I couldn't quite step over.
_______
Sit in the chair,
Say a prayer.
An answer tomorrow
From St. Senara.
_______
What matters is giving over to what you love.
_______
"Her hand is nearly mended," I said, "but I worry that her mind may never be."
_______
"Don't throw it away," she mumbled, her tone barely audible.
I bent over her. "What are you saying? Throw what away?"
A nurse making marks on a clipboard nearby looked up.
"She's been saying that since she started waking."
I bent down where I could smell the noxious odor of the anesthetic from her mouth. "Throw what away?" I repeated.
"My finger," she said, and the nurse stopped writing and stared at me with her mouth formed into a small, pinched circle.
"Where is your finger?" I asked. "I looked for it."
"In a bowl, in the refrigerator, " she said, her eyes already closed.
_______
"That's what I mean about redemption," I said. "I think all this dismembering she's doing is really about her need to grow something, or make a new world, to re-member herself back in a new way."
________
I'd thought we would be buried together. Side by side in a nice cemetery in Atlanta. Or that our cremated remains would sit in matching urns in Dee's house until she found it in herself to go out and scatter them. Once I'd imagined her hauling the urns all the way to Egret Island and tossing handfuls of us in the air on Bone Yard Beach. I'd pictured the wind whipping us together in a blizzard of indistinguishable particles - Hugh and me flying to the sky, returning to the earth, together. And Dee walking away with bits of us in her hair. What was the mysterious and enduring thing that had made me so certain of us for so long? Where had it gone?
_______
I sat in amazement, the translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there - life as it 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.
- Pablo Neruda
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all the ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
- W. B. Yeats
This is a weird love story which could have and should have been better. The Mermaid Folklore related to Sainthood was extremely intriguing.
Favorite Passages:
They say you can bear anything if you can tell a story about it.
_______
In the end the mermaids did not save him. But I wonder if perhaps they saved me. I know this much: The mermaids came to me finally, in the pink hours of my life.
_______
When Dee was small, she'd mistakenly called the church the "Scared Heart of Mary." The two of us still referred to it that way sometimes, and it occurred to me now how apt the name really was. I mean, if Mary was still around, like so many people thought, including my insatiably Catholic mother, maybe her heart was scared. Maybe it was because she was on such a high and impossible pedestal - Consummate Monther, Good Wife, All-Around Paragon of Perfect Womanhood. She was probably up there peering over the side, wishing for a ladder, a parachute, something to get her down from there.
_______
I lay back on the bed; I felt like a tent collapsing, the center pole yanked out, followed by the billowy floating.
_______
"Jessie," she said. "The reason I called . . . Yesterday your mother cut off her finger with a meat cleaver. Her right index finger."
_______
I'd always felt that Kat harbored some knowledge about Mother that was off-limits to me, a wall with a concealed room behind it.
_______
"You can go other places, all right - you can live on the other side of the world, but you can't ever leave home."
_______
. . . I felt myself rise up out of that little smudge of ash, with the determination of a phoenix. I will leave here, I told myself. I will fly away.
_______
The last thing I'd expected was to stand on Hepzibah's porch and feel a seizure of love for Egret Island. And not just for the island but for the woman my mother had been, dancing around a fire.
Something struck me then: I'd never done any of those things my mother had done. Never danced on a beach. Never made a bonfire. Never waded into the ocean at night with laughing women and tied my life to theirs.
_______
I was surprised by the weight of memory, the awful contagion of family, of place.
_______
Kat slid back her foot, and we stood in the late afternoon, in a moment of perfect stillness, and stared at my mother's blood.
_______
That time Mike was eight and got his poor penis stuck in a Coke bottle while urinating into it - for reasons none of us ever understood. His penis had, shall we say, expanded somewhat after entry. Mother had tried to act concerned but broke down laughing. She told him, "Mike, go sit in your room and picture Mother Teresa, and your penis will come right out."
_______
"What happened to her finger? The one she cut off?"
"It's in a mayonnaise jar by her bed," she answered matter-of-factly.
_______
The smell of gumbo hung inside the house in thick green ropes, like something you could swing on to get across the kitchen.
_______
What would I say to her? Do you have plans to sever any more body parts? It sounded crass, horrible, but that's what I really wanted to know - whether she was a danger to herself, whether she needed committing to some place that could take care of her.
_______
He said his religion was the sea. That it was his family. He'd told Mike and me stories about a sea kingdom ruled by a gang of ruthless and snails and the brave keyhole limpets who tried to overthrow them. His imagination was ingenious.
_______
Maybe her faith in the church made up for his lack of it. My mother and father made a peculiar couple - Walt Whitman and Joan of Arc - but it'd worked. They had adored each other. I was sure of that.
_______
I closed my eyes. I felt that the centerpiece of my history had been dug up and exposed as a complete and utter fiction. It left a gaping place I couldn't quite step over.
_______
Sit in the chair,
Say a prayer.
An answer tomorrow
From St. Senara.
_______
What matters is giving over to what you love.
_______
"Her hand is nearly mended," I said, "but I worry that her mind may never be."
_______
"Don't throw it away," she mumbled, her tone barely audible.
I bent over her. "What are you saying? Throw what away?"
A nurse making marks on a clipboard nearby looked up.
"She's been saying that since she started waking."
I bent down where I could smell the noxious odor of the anesthetic from her mouth. "Throw what away?" I repeated.
"My finger," she said, and the nurse stopped writing and stared at me with her mouth formed into a small, pinched circle.
"Where is your finger?" I asked. "I looked for it."
"In a bowl, in the refrigerator, " she said, her eyes already closed.
_______
"That's what I mean about redemption," I said. "I think all this dismembering she's doing is really about her need to grow something, or make a new world, to re-member herself back in a new way."
________
I'd thought we would be buried together. Side by side in a nice cemetery in Atlanta. Or that our cremated remains would sit in matching urns in Dee's house until she found it in herself to go out and scatter them. Once I'd imagined her hauling the urns all the way to Egret Island and tossing handfuls of us in the air on Bone Yard Beach. I'd pictured the wind whipping us together in a blizzard of indistinguishable particles - Hugh and me flying to the sky, returning to the earth, together. And Dee walking away with bits of us in her hair. What was the mysterious and enduring thing that had made me so certain of us for so long? Where had it gone?
_______
I sat in amazement, the translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there - life as it 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.
...
Show More
This has to be one of the best opening paragraphs ever:
"In the middle of my marriage, when I was above all Hugh's wife and Dee's mother, one of those unambiguous women with no desire to disturb the universe, I fell in love with a Benedictine monk."
So much tantalizing plot is known from the start. Jessie, the 'I' of the paragraph, returns to the South Carolina island where she grew up after her mother - who cooks for a nearby monastery - has cut off one of her fingers. While Jessie has never truly recovered from the loss of her beloved father when she was nine, this return triggers more memories and puzzles - many involving her mother.
The highly symbolic mermaid chair of the title (what is one's true home? Mermaids are caught between sea and land...)lends itself to explorations of love, faith, fidelity and the nature of the soul.
"In the middle of my marriage, when I was above all Hugh's wife and Dee's mother, one of those unambiguous women with no desire to disturb the universe, I fell in love with a Benedictine monk."
So much tantalizing plot is known from the start. Jessie, the 'I' of the paragraph, returns to the South Carolina island where she grew up after her mother - who cooks for a nearby monastery - has cut off one of her fingers. While Jessie has never truly recovered from the loss of her beloved father when she was nine, this return triggers more memories and puzzles - many involving her mother.
The highly symbolic mermaid chair of the title (what is one's true home? Mermaids are caught between sea and land...)lends itself to explorations of love, faith, fidelity and the nature of the soul.
...
Show More
I liked this alot, in spite of my predilection not to once I realized the gist of the story. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as The Secret Life of Bees... it was exceptionally well-written, definitely better than most of the stuff I have been reading. It was relevant and I think prompted reflection on my general psychological well-being and state. But I couldn't help but feel like it wasn't fresh... to me. Some of what the main character Jessie learned I feel like I already knew. So I didn't relish the spectacular affair she had with Brother Thomas, because I knew all along how it would end. That part wasn't a discovery for me.
Where I think Kidd's true strength is, is in her writing about family ties and how they influence us. Jessie's relationship with her father was the most poignant for me, and the most true. I felt like her mother was pathetic and this part of the story, about the women-bonds in Jessie's life, didn't really ring true. The story was about Jessie's relationships with men and how her father impacted those.
Having said I enjoyed it and it prompted reflection on my own life, I was vaguely uneasy with all the psychological posturing in the book. I guess it was an integral part of the character's journey, but it was a little too self-conscious, particularly when shared from the viewpoint of Hugh.
Although I prefer her first novel, I would recommend this one and I'll read anything else she puts out. I think this novel may be more profound than I am giving it credit for... perhaps because, as I've said, what Jessie discovered about her need for self just didn't seem like news to me.
Where I think Kidd's true strength is, is in her writing about family ties and how they influence us. Jessie's relationship with her father was the most poignant for me, and the most true. I felt like her mother was pathetic and this part of the story, about the women-bonds in Jessie's life, didn't really ring true. The story was about Jessie's relationships with men and how her father impacted those.
Having said I enjoyed it and it prompted reflection on my own life, I was vaguely uneasy with all the psychological posturing in the book. I guess it was an integral part of the character's journey, but it was a little too self-conscious, particularly when shared from the viewpoint of Hugh.
Although I prefer her first novel, I would recommend this one and I'll read anything else she puts out. I think this novel may be more profound than I am giving it credit for... perhaps because, as I've said, what Jessie discovered about her need for self just didn't seem like news to me.
...
Show More
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.
...
Show More
I have to think on this before writing a full review. I loved some of the writing in the prologue and hoped that it would continue throughout the book. There were glimpses and the ending paragraph, but I wanted more of her descriptive and reflective prose. The overall story was good, I liked the setting, I was very interested in what was going on with the MC's mother, I even was okay with how everything concluded, but one of the pieces was distasteful to me and kept me from being all in. Like I said I'll think on this to see if I can capture my feelings about the novel.
...
Show More
I really wanted to like this book and after being pleasantly surprised (and touched) by "The Secret Life of Bees" I was pretty eager to read it. Having said that, I didn't dislike it. I guess disappointed is the word. I was disappointed in the characters, the themes, the motivations and the plot overall. The characters seemed stock/shallow and a bit forced with the only believable one of the lot being the poor husband (and the friend’s “off” daughter, who was a hoot...we needed more of her) and the dog. Nothing is really explained and while I understand that impulses don't always warrant explanation, it still left me feeling a bit used up and frustrated. The sex scenes were especially tedious and sometimes I almost felt as if this was a serious confessional (but I also think I’m a bit of a prude). I found myself plodding along because it wasn't a very long book in hopes that at some point it would suddenly make sense. And don't get me wrong, Sue Monk Kidd has talent, there are some brilliant passages here, beautiful and moving and as real as anything you'd like. The mystery of the mother and her self mutilation was quite intriguing as well as various "touched upon" descriptions of the island (like the slave cemetery). But overall it was a bit of a let down and I may have expected too much of it because of the previous read. So I apologize for wanting that "heck yeah!" feeling I got with "Secret Life of Bees" and should have just let this one present itself on its own without pretext.
...
Show More
Secret Life of Bees this wasn't. There was nothing appealing about the main character Jessie--selfish, unfaithful, thoughtless. Not only could I not like her-- I actually couldn't stand her. For me that's the kiss of death-- character development and attachment to me is the number one necessity if I'm going to really like/love a book.
The story itself was a little bit "Prince of Tides" to me ( of course I actually attached to some of those characters and that book). Family member has a breakdown, the other family member comes to help, has an affair, major family secrets revealed, re-evaluates life...even set a lot in SC. Anyhow.. just flickered my memory of that book a bit.
The good parts? It's short and easy to read. The descriptions of the scenery/atmosphere are good (I can especially relate being a current Carolina gal). I liked her husband's character Hugh.
The story itself was a little bit "Prince of Tides" to me ( of course I actually attached to some of those characters and that book). Family member has a breakdown, the other family member comes to help, has an affair, major family secrets revealed, re-evaluates life...even set a lot in SC. Anyhow.. just flickered my memory of that book a bit.
The good parts? It's short and easy to read. The descriptions of the scenery/atmosphere are good (I can especially relate being a current Carolina gal). I liked her husband's character Hugh.
...
Show More
What a lovely book. The writing is eloquent and thoughtful. It is about grief and loss and living. And most importantly how strong, independent women connect, protect and care for each other through the loss. I particularly liked how Jessie and her mother find their way through by laying claim to themselves.
...
Show More
I threw this book across the room a couple of times before coming to goodreads and reading the reviews. The vitriol that was spouted about the book was fascinating. "Distasteful"! "Gross"! Well, for that alone I had to finish the book. Ladies and gentleman, I was not disappointed. This is a pretty distasteful book. It's, first of all, not written in a terribly interesting way beyond the other issues it has. Every pebble on the beach, every movement of the waves is an opportunity for tangential reminiscing (which is initially what caused me to throw the book across the room). I guess my main complaint is that it's very hard to feel sorry for Jessie. Her complaints seem trite and then incomprehensible. Great husband, successful child, amazing house, disposable income--> but she feels so "empty" inside! Okay, maybe she's dissatisfied about "losin that lovin feeling" with her husband, but don't use quasi-spiritual pseudo-feminist Eat Pray Love type excuses for wanting to bone the hot monk. How is it a statement of independence to have an extramarital affair? Don't make up these excuses, Sue Monk Kidd, be honest with your audience: "Jessie" is the most immature 40 year old around, and selfish and whiny to boot, and she got a warm feeling in her loins and had sex with a monk. In fact, the dialogue and the characterization made me hard to visualize Jessie as 40. I imagined her more as in her early 20s. I should hope that only teenagers and people in their early 20s set their sights on a hottie and declare they are in "love"! Ditto the monk. I imagined his emotional age as 16 as well. "I'm not hiding from the world!..." 300 pages later "....oh wait, I guess I am. Peace, Jessie!" Sue Monk Kidd tries to make it seem like Jessie is getting back with her husband because he is her "true love" but she has spent the pages before that "reveal" basically taking a dump on his heart. It's obvious that if Brother Hottie hadn't taken solemn vows, she would have dumped Hugh like nada. Because she is "independent" now--> she married herself to the sea, after all, and put doodads on an altar and accidentally appropriated some Gullah rituals (I liked the "Magical Negro" touch, Sue Monk Kidd /sarcasm).
The only interesting part was the mom cutting off her fingers...but the real reason she was doing it was frustratingly convoluted and inefficiently explained in 2 or 3 pages--I guess Sue Monk Kidd needed the rest of the pages for descriptions of the beach, unnecessary flashbacks, and sexytimes.
The only interesting part was the mom cutting off her fingers...but the real reason she was doing it was frustratingly convoluted and inefficiently explained in 2 or 3 pages--I guess Sue Monk Kidd needed the rest of the pages for descriptions of the beach, unnecessary flashbacks, and sexytimes.
...
Show More
I just finished The Mermaid Chair, a novel I started around a year ago, stopping many times to read almost 15 books in between the first and last pages. For some reason, I picked it up from my library a week ago, finishing almost 300 pages in 7 days. Now let me start by giving it a rating: I’d say 2 stars (out of five). I do not understand how it was a bestseller!
So, what is wrong with the book? Flat. Although there is a lot of diving into the minds of some of the characters, yet it’s as if you’re seeing someone is striving inside whether to go to the shoemaker or to go grocery shopping! Kidd could not get me emotionally involved but in the last 70 pages. The main plot of the novel (Jessie falling out of marriage and in love with a monk) is not closely as interesting as the sub-plot (the reasons behind Jessie’s mother cutting her fingers one after the other).
Kidd tried to make the novel a quest of realizing one’s self (a mystical journey, some might claim). I have to admit the speech at the end when Jessie said “All my life, in nameless, indeterminate ways, I’d tried to complete myself with someone else – first my father, then Hugh, even Whit, and I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to belong to myself” was powerful but not the journey itself. She has been through physical toil (of being with her mom through the stressful period of cutting her fingers, being hospitalized and through recovery) but not emotional/psychological one.
The novel is a not-so-good version of the masterpiece The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Many motifs (sea/water, (physical) love, clothes…etc.) in The Awakening are used in The Mermaid Chair. But most of them are not skilfully or profoundly employed as Chopin did in her novel. The final scene in The Awakening where Edna goes inside the sea is re-used here but I have to admit in a good way:
“When the water swelled above my knees, I stopped and dug in my pocket for the bits of twine I’d gathered off the lawn at the monastery. I wanted to tie a knot that would go on forever. But not with anyone else. With myself.”
Although the novel ends in the same status as before Jessie starts her self-realization quest- back to her marriage and abandoning her love, yet she has gone through re-birth; she lost her old self, went really deep in sin and suffering just to rise up with a new identity. Or as Whit, her lover monk, said that they were going to be each others’ damnation and salvation.
So, what is wrong with the book? Flat. Although there is a lot of diving into the minds of some of the characters, yet it’s as if you’re seeing someone is striving inside whether to go to the shoemaker or to go grocery shopping! Kidd could not get me emotionally involved but in the last 70 pages. The main plot of the novel (Jessie falling out of marriage and in love with a monk) is not closely as interesting as the sub-plot (the reasons behind Jessie’s mother cutting her fingers one after the other).
Kidd tried to make the novel a quest of realizing one’s self (a mystical journey, some might claim). I have to admit the speech at the end when Jessie said “All my life, in nameless, indeterminate ways, I’d tried to complete myself with someone else – first my father, then Hugh, even Whit, and I didn’t want that anymore. I wanted to belong to myself” was powerful but not the journey itself. She has been through physical toil (of being with her mom through the stressful period of cutting her fingers, being hospitalized and through recovery) but not emotional/psychological one.
The novel is a not-so-good version of the masterpiece The Awakening by Kate Chopin. Many motifs (sea/water, (physical) love, clothes…etc.) in The Awakening are used in The Mermaid Chair. But most of them are not skilfully or profoundly employed as Chopin did in her novel. The final scene in The Awakening where Edna goes inside the sea is re-used here but I have to admit in a good way:
“When the water swelled above my knees, I stopped and dug in my pocket for the bits of twine I’d gathered off the lawn at the monastery. I wanted to tie a knot that would go on forever. But not with anyone else. With myself.”
Although the novel ends in the same status as before Jessie starts her self-realization quest- back to her marriage and abandoning her love, yet she has gone through re-birth; she lost her old self, went really deep in sin and suffering just to rise up with a new identity. Or as Whit, her lover monk, said that they were going to be each others’ damnation and salvation.
Leave a Review