Book Review: The Mermaid Chair

There are some authors who hold you even when you don't particularly appreciate the direction a story is headed.  I'm glad that this was true of Sue Monk Kidd, in The Mermaid Chair, or I might not have given this story a chance.  At the beginning, it seemed like this was going to be a story of adultery just for adultery's sake.  I found myself talking back to the story, saying things like "You can't just abandon a marriage because you see someone and fall in love in an instant," and "isn't that too typical ... a person grows stale in a relationship and thinks that seeking love elsewhere is the answer."  And, I found the thought of a monk engaging in adultery to be a bit more than I could swallow. Thankfully, the lyrical prose which Sue Monk Kidd masterfully weaves kept me listening to this audio book.

I found myself wishing I could write as beautifully as she does. Her similes are creative and fresh.  She evokes images so well and thoroughly plunges the reader into the atmosphere of her story. The further the story went, the deeper I was pulled into this colorful tale. By the end, it was clear, there is significant truth in this story, despite what felt at the beginning to be a glorification of adultery.

Jessie has been summoned to Egret Island, the small island off the coast of South Carolina where she grew up.  In a seemingly senseless act, Jessie's mother has chopped off one of her own fingers.  Although her psychiatrist husband, Hugh, offers to accompany her and help her get to the bottom of things, Jessie insists this is a journey she must make alone.  She has been feeling stagnant in life ever since their only daughter, Dee, went away to college.  She feels she needs to get away to find herself.

In the midst of finding herself, she also falls in love with Brother Thomas, a monk who is about to take his vows.  Brother Thomas has come to the monastery to find shelter and solace after the death of his wife and unborn baby.  He is searching for something spiritual to fill the emptiness within.  He falls in love with Jessie the moment he sees her, as well (I think this is why I was talking back to the book).

Through images of mermaids and saints and intertwining threads, the author carries Jessie through this perplexing journey into her mother's madness and helps her to understand the death of her father more fully.  She begins to realize many things about herself that were set in motion when her father died on a small boat from an explosion thought to be caused by the very pipe Jessie had given him for Father's Day.

She does find herself.  She grows into herself, I should say.  She begins to see herself more clearly and then comes to her senses about what she really wants, which is to stand on her own two feet and make her marriage work.

I think the story could have been told without the adultery.  I think the two characters could have interacted in a way to show their broken lives gaining redemption without plunging into such a moral pit.  But, her writing was, indeed, beautiful.

Here is an example of the author's brilliant prose, taken from the very end of this story:

"Forgiveness was so much harder than being remorseful.  I couldn't imagine the terrible surrender it would take ....  There are things without explanation.  Moments when life will become arranged in such odd ways that you imagine a whole vocabulary of meaning inside them.  The breakfast smell struck me like that.  That was where our marriage had left off, that day back in February.  February 17th.  Ash Wednesday.  The day of ashes and endings.  Hugh had cooked breakfast - sausage and eggs. It had been the final thing before I'd left.  The benediction....

"[I was] afraid I would ruin whatever was about to happen.  The room seemed to hang in the air revolving, deliberate, like a bit of glass lifted to the sun and turned slowly to refract the light....

"There would be no grand absolution, only forgiveness meted out in these precious sips.  It would well up from Hugh's heart in spoonfuls and he would feed it to me and it would be enough."

That's the kind of writing that holds you spellbound and brings you around full circle so that you completely understand the changes the characters have undergone.  That's the kind of writing that makes you end a book wishing you could pick it up again and start all over.  I fully intend to start all over again, with her other bestseller, The Secret Life of Bees.  It is clear why her books are so very popular.  I hope she continues to weave these wonderful webs for readers to follow and perch upon.