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The Mermaid Chair

A Novel

By Sue Monk Kidd

(35)

| Hardcover | 9780670033942

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Book Description

Sue Monk Kidd's stunning debut, "The Secret Life of Bees, spent 77 weeks on "The New York Times bestseller list, selling more than 3 million copies and transforming Kidd into a genuine literary star. Now, in her much-anticipated new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legiContinue

Critics

The Mermaid Chair By Sue Monk Kidd

Fans of Sue Monk Kidd's best-selling debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees, will be equally enamored with her beguiling sophomore effort, The Mermaid Chair, which revisits some of the terrain of its predecessor but in an altogether new context. Though ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Mon, 13 Sep 2010

The Mermaid Chair By Sue Monk Kidd

Sue Monk Kidd's follow-up to her bestseller, The Secret Life of Bees, is a poignant and beautifully composed novel about a woman's transformative experience at middle age. Atlanta housewife Jessie Sullivan finds herself face to face with the past whe ... (read full critics)

bookpage published on Mon, 13 Sep 2010

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4 Reviews

I actually cried at the ending of this book. It was well written and very interesting. I felt like I had to know how it ended so I stayed up until 1 AM last night reading it! I wasn't disappointed. Surprised, but not disappointed. Recommended!

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Heather Landry said on Jan 23, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Although I enjoyed this as much as The Secret Life of Bees, I did find it rather fairytale like rather than realistic. Maybe I was meant to?
There is one theme that appears in both books which makes me wonder if the author maybe also have lost her Father as a child. In The Secret Life of Bees t ... (continue)

Although I enjoyed this as much as The Secret Life of Bees, I did find it rather fairytale like rather than realistic. Maybe I was meant to?
There is one theme that appears in both books which makes me wonder if the author maybe also have lost her Father as a child. In The Secret Life of Bees the heroine Lily believes that as a child she accidentally killed her mother. Then in The Mermaid Chair you have Jessie believing she was the cause of her father's accidental death.
Anyway, those are my thoughts on this powerful novel that is well worth reading.

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Lindyloumac said on Dec 4, 2009 | Add your feedback

The Mermaid Chair

A mostly run-of-the-mill story about a middle-aged woman looking for herself. Overall it's not a bad story but it lacks the memorable characters and magic that made The Secret Life of Bees a favorite, and it sports a rather unsatisfactory (but safe) ending.

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Readingrat said on Jul 9, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

I don't know where to start to say all the things that sound wrong in this novel...
First of all, the names of the characters.
I felt an immediate antipathy for this grown-up woman who is still called Jessie by friends and relatives. I mean, Jessie????
Are you a teenage girl or a 42 ... (continue)

I don't know where to start to say all the things that sound wrong in this novel...
First of all, the names of the characters.
I felt an immediate antipathy for this grown-up woman who is still called Jessie by friends and relatives. I mean, Jessie????
Are you a teenage girl or a 42 years woman with a daughter attending college?
And then, Whitney. Wasn't it a female name?
Not to mention Benne and Hepzibah. Was the author smoking crack all the way through the process of writing this book?
Point B: the characters. Jessie is incredibly self-centred and immature; as for her husband, I cannot really picture anyone finding some silly song about Freud incredibly amusing, enough to laugh at it for a whole hour!
Give me a break.
And Hepzibah. I have the greatest respect for African Americans, and they have my whole support as a minority in a difficult society such as the American one.
Nonetheless I can't help but thinking that wearing like an African and converting to Islam doesn't make you a real African nor makes you closer to your supposed brothers in that continent.
Seen from here, people like Hepzibah seem only to be toying with the idea of being Africans as opposed to being Americans.
And so is she with her clothes and her gullah sentences.
Going back to the book.
The plot: a married woman with a middle age crisis who falls in love with a priest. Nothing that we haven't already read in a cheap romance or a women's fiction book.
The religious obsession of the mother is the only one thing that kept me reading this novel, giving it a touch of interest.
As for the stress on religion, I understand American society is living a kind of religious euphoria during these last years, and while Catholic guilt feelings can be interesting once, when it gets to be a constant issue for an author, like in Kidd's case, it starts to be boring, at least for me.
And, last but not least, the writing.
"You can't stop your heart from loving, really - it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop"
"I stepped out of them and stood in my light blue panties and matching bra and let him stare at me"
"I wanted to go and slide my arms around him, press my face against his back, say, It's okay, it is. We were meant for this (...)"
Sentences like these made me really want to throw the book out of the train's window while going to work...
I'm so disappointed by this novel. I had enjoyed Kidd's first book as a good summer reading, but The mermaid chair is one of the most irritating books I have ever read. What a pity that a decent debut doesn't make a good writer!

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Miss Piggott said on Aug 2, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback