The Mermaid Chair

“Book clubs, start your engines. Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, has sold 3 million copies since 2002... Those are big shoes to fill, but Kidd acquits herself admirably with The Mermaid Chair. She returns to her Southern roots to set a multifaceted mystery amid the salt marshes of a fictional South Carolina barrier island. Bees and Mermaid have many similarities. They are coming-of-age stories, one told by a girl in her teens and the other by a woman in the middle of her life. Both novels drip with vivid images of hot Southern afternoons, droning insects, swooping birds and oases in which nature is the fabric of life. It is a tapestry strengthened by bonds between women that bridge pain and loss. Most important, both have passages of beautiful writing… Kidd wrote two well-received memoirs before turning to fiction. But perhaps the answer ultimately given by The Mermaid Chair is that a storyteller also can change course and come of age in the middle of her life.”
--USA Today
 
  “Secret Life (of Bees) revolved around an icon, a black Madonna. This time it's a chair carved in the shape of a mermaid, a symbol of our spiritually amphibious nature, of the inner depths to which we must descend before we can solve the problems of our placid surface existence. Kidd borrows liberally from her first novel--a trio of salty, independent island women is reminiscent of the beekeeping sisters of Secret Life--but her writing is so smart and sharp, she gives new life to old midlife crises, and she draws connections from the feminine to the divine to the erotic that a lesser writer wouldn't see, and might not have the guts to follow.”
--Time Magazine
 
  “Kidd has a flair for making us see her characters with great vividness and immediacy.”
--New York Times Book Review
 
  “(A) rewarding second novel by the author of the bestselling Secret Life of Bees. Writing from the perspective of conflicted, discontented Jessie, Kidd achieves a bold intensity and complexity that wasn't possible in The Secret Life of Bees, narrated by teenage Lily. Jessie's efforts to cope with marital stagnation; Whit's crisis of faith; and Nelle's tormented reckoning with the past will resonate with many readers. This emotionally rich novel, full of sultry, magical descriptions of life in the South, is sure to be another hit for Kidd.”
--Publishers Weekly, starred review
 
  “Compelling reading….The writing is soulful in its probing of the human heart and family secrets.”
--The San Francisco Chronicle
 
  “Kidd's second offering is just as gracefully written as her first and possesses an equally compelling story. It should appeal to the many readers who made her first novel a hit with book clubs.”
--Booklist Magazine (American Library Association)
 
  “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. … Reconciling the spiritual with the human, The Mermaid Chair is a captivating metaphorical and sensual journey into one woman’s soul. Weaving enduring folklore about the seductive and transformative power of mermaids into a modern-day tale of rebirth, the novel shows us that sometimes we need to swim out to sea for the currents to carry us back home.”
--Book Page Magazine
 
  "Secrets are told. Mysteries are revealed. In one rich and satisfying gush…, Jessie reevaluates just about every aspect of her life: her husband, her lover, her mother, her artwork, the death of her father decades ago, and most of all herself... Rewarding."
--Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
 
  “If [The Secret Life of] Bees was a girl’s coming-of-age novel, [The Mermaid] Chair is a woman’s coming-of-middle-age novel….The prose thrilled me. Kidd can really turn a phrase and her descriptions of nature’s archetypal elements are magnificent.”
--Philadelphia Inquirer
 
  “A woman at life’s crossroads, a parent’s tragic death and a strong, if eccentric circle of women. Stir in a forbidden love, and the pages all but turn themselves.”
--Parade
 
  “Kidd grabs you from the first sentence of “The Mermaid’s Chair”. It is a satisfying tale that balances Southern gothic…wish-fulfillment romance and a down-to-earth dissection of family problems. Sue Monk Kidd is a high-end practitioner of Ya-Ya-ism, with a lucid prose style and a fine sense of story. … A good read.”
--The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 
  “A well-told tale about marriage, mystery - and mermaids....Kidd writes at a deeper emotional level than she did in the fabulously popular Bees. Her characters are more tormented, more complex, in their processes of coming unwound and then healing.... Yet it is also a quite powerful feminist statement, and can be savored strictly on the basis of Kidd's beautiful use of language....The Mermaid Chair is a multidimensional pleasure.”
--Fort Worth Star-Telegram
 
  “(A) richly rewarding follow-up to her best-selling debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees…. Kidd draws on her extensive knowledge of theology and mythology in this insightful book about the passions and desires of body and soul. Kidd. . . slowly and carefully unveils her story about the meaning of love, the necessity of risk, and the power of forgiveness.”
--Orlando Sentinel
 
  “The steady pulse of Kidd's writing pushes this narrative from heart-throbber to soul-searcher.”
--Boston Herald
 
  “This lush follow-up finds Kidd asking even bigger questions with the story of a woman whose life and marriage have grown increasingly stale.”
--Breathe Magazine
 
  “It’s hard to put this book down for little things like sleeping and eating.”
--Elle, “Elle’s Letters” Readers’ Prize 2005
 
  “[An] illuminating investigation of midlife malaise…The Mermaid Chair honors those who conjure up the courage to rediscover and recommit to their life passions.”
--The Seattle Times
 
  “No question: Kidd can write.”
--The San Diego Union-Tribune
 
  “Those who fell in love with Kidd’s first novel will find pleasure here.”
--The Oregonian
 
  “It takes a rare and mysterious novel to speak to our souls in so many ways that we return to the book again and again for refreshment and renewal. Sue Monk Kidd created that kind of magic in The Secret Life of Bees, and her new novel promises to have the same effect…. The Mermaid Chair will lure you into its warm embrace if you have experienced a deep sense of loss in your life that will not let you go. It will appeal to your yearning for a close encounter with grace. It will enchant that secret part of you that loves mermaids and saints. It will touch all those who struggle with the Sacred Feminine in all her incarnations.”
--Spirituality and Health
 
  “Richly rewarding”
--Chicago Tribune
 
  “As a stylist, Kidd is in firm command of her subject. She crafts the Low country as still life, with impressionistic beauty, complete with Gullah denizens….The Mermaid Chair provides more than the easy reach for casual readers, for underlying the woman-come-home plot, Kidd provides depth to her characters through thematic contradictions: spirituality versus the erotic, Christian versus mythological, new life through death, ultimately reconciling this writer's overall credo: There is no happiness or spiritual contentment without an appreciation for emptiness and the necessary experience of hell….The Mermaid Chair exceeds Kidd's first novel both in scope and in depth. While it is darker in tone, deeper with dysfunction, Kidd reprises the old techniques. She textures her novel with complex characters, rich imagery and seamless symbolism….The Mermaid Chair proves her versatility as a storyteller, her devotion to craft and a heart for the genuine character.”
--The Post & Courier (Charleston)
 
  “Kidd's greatest strength as a writer is her sensuous, evocative prose. Egret Island is alive with its scent of salted air, old crab pots, bulling gumbo. The novel is also full, dense with symbolism, from the recurrent motif of the mermaid, diving deep and surfacing, to images of baptism, birds, rebirth. And Kidd continues to emphasize her central insights into the power of secrets to fester, the healing force of honesty and the significance of communities of independent but interwoven women, open to reconfigured rituals of grace....Kidd suggests that to merge body and soul just might enlarge a sense of what it is to be religious and to be married.”
--Pittsburgh Post Gazette
 
  “[Kidd's] imagination, originality and command of language never cease. She is simply a profound storyteller.”
--The Denver Post
 
  “Kidd’s sparkling imagery in The Mermaid Chair surpasses her efforts in “Bees” and helps morph a simple story into something approaching myth… What keeps Kidd… flying high is her abiding sense of humor (her characters are really “characters”), an earthbound understanding of the ebb and flow of life, and her studious attention to the great metaphors of life. … No doubt about it, women in their middle years will appreciate this novel. In fact, it looks like the “Bees” phenomenon might be repeated.”
--Santa Cruz Sentinel
 
  “This is a tale of how relationships are formed and how deeply they affect our lives. Thought-provoking and poignant… powerful and passionate, the book will have you hooked to the very end.”
--Peterborough Evening Telegraph (England)
 
  “The novel has humor and a profound feeling for its primeval landscape of mudflats and salt creeks. And it’s full of the kind of eccentric characters that throng any small fictional community worth its salt. (The Mermaid Chair) becomes symbolic of Jessie’s dive to the bottom of inner tide-pools-- resurfacing with new-found libido, creativity and self-possession…At the heart of this story is Jessie’s awakening and her unraveling of her father’s mysterious death, the cause of which is movingly revealed. It’s the sensitively plotted emotional journey that makes this another inevitable bestseller.”
--Time Out London (England)
 
  “Every bit as convincing and moving as her previous, bestselling novel, The Secret Life of Bees.”
--The Daily Mirror (England)