The Mermaid Chair

Summary (from the publisher): Sue Monk Kidd's stunning debut, The Secret Life of Bees, has transformed her into a genuine literary star. Now, in her much-anticipated new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans and cement her reputation as one of the most remarkable writers at work today.

Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on tiny Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.

Jessie Sullivan's conventional life has been molded to the smallest space possible. ”So when she is called home to cope with her mother's startling and enigmatic act of violence, Jessie finds herself relieved to be apart from her husband, Hugh. Jessie loves Hugh, but on Egret Island —amid the gorgeous marshlands and tidal creeks— she becomes drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is mere months from taking his final vows. What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, as Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, she will find a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right.

What inspires the yearning for a soul mate? Few writers have explored, as Kidd does, the lush, unknown region of the feminine soul where the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic exists. The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body; one that illuminates a woman's self-awakening with the brilliance and power that only a writer of Kidd's ability could conjure.

Review: The Mermaid Chair represents the greatest discrepancy between a Goodreads rating and my own opinion of the novel that I have encountered so far. This book deserves far more than 2.93 stars.  The only explanation I can think of for the low ratings this book has received is that readers were expecting another Secret Life of Bees and this book is nothing like Kidd's earlier novel.  

This novel is about Jessie, a woman who grew up on an island and never returned after she married her husband, Hugh. After Jessie's daughter goes to college, Jessie is left feeling restless and unfulfilled.  These feelings of discontent coincide with her mother, who still lives on the island, brutally cutting her own finger off. Jessie returns to the island to help her mother and also to contemplate her own future. While on the island, Jessie falls for a young monk, who joined the monastery on the island after losing his wife and unborn child in a car crash. 

I suppose in many ways Jessie's story is a midlife crisis type dilemma, but Kidd conveys it in such lyrical, introspective terms I couldn't help but feel the emotions Jessie was going through. The love triangle created between Jessie, Hugh, and Brother Thomas was compelling and I felt compassion for both Hugh, the devoted husband, and Brother Thomas, the grieving widower and earnest soul. My only complaint was that Jessie's daughter seemed to figure so little into the storyline and the tidy conclusion between Jessie and Brother Thomas was a bit too convenient. 

Stars: 3.5