What a terrific read! In The Mermaid Chair, Sue Monk Kidd has given us a tale of a woman searching for her lost soul. Jessie Sullivan, the main character, tells us her story in first person … that of a woman deeply restless in her marriage, lost and unhappy. She is called back to the place where she grew up, Egret Island, by friends of the family on the occasion of her mother having taken a meat cleaver and chopped off one of her fingers.
Once at the island, the plot really unfolds with this bizarre mystery, Jessie’s unforeseen attraction to a monk, her struggle with her relationship with her husband of many years, the riches of female friendship, and the mermaid chair itself. Not the least of it all, is the magnificent description of place.
For the duration of this book, I was immersed in the physical life of Egret Island, an imaginary place off Charleston, South Carolina. Monk has nothing short of an exquisite use of words in describing the island, the marshes, birds, and sultry air. I am truly in awe of her ability to bring me to a place that lives and breathes so, that surrounds me while I read. For this, I was sorry when the book ended … I loved being there.
With a richness of characters in the women – Nelle, (Jessie’s mother), friends Hepzibah and Kat, and Kat’s daughter, Benne- The Mermaid Chair weaves the mystery — what caused her mother to brutally attack her own body this way? And then, how is Jessie Sullivan attracted to a monk? Brother Thomas/Whit is also wonderfully drawn, as is Jessie’s husband Hugh. While Jessie struggles, searching for answers in her own life as well as for her mother, she paints. And paints, in ways she’s never seen herself do before.
The Mermaid Chair is described as a coming-of-middle-age novel, which could sound kind of ho-hum unless in the hands of a very skilled writer. Have no fear – Sue Monk Kidd is that writer. It really is a book I couldn’t put down and was reading past the hour when I should have been asleep. It simply has everything … a deep mystery, love and passion, the bond of female friendship and a search for one’s soul.
When all is said and done, other than Monk’s exceptional writing, the most compelling comparison I could make between The Mermaid Chair and The Secret Life of Bees, is that I truly never knew how it was going to end. And that’s a good thing.
I liked Smoke Signals; I was left thinking about a number of things afterwards — the characters, their situations, how the story was told. The two main characters, Victor Joseph and Thomas Builds-the-Fire, grew up together on the Spokane Reservation, bonded by Victor’s alcoholic father having saved Thomas when his doomed parents tossed him out the window of their home, engulfed in flames. Victor and his mother are abused by the alcoholic father, who although he loves them, will not give up drinking and leaves the rez. Sometime later, he passes away, and Victor wants to make the trip to Phoenix to pick up his father’s ashes. As Victor is unable to afford the trip, Thomas offers to pay if he can go along. Victor is troubled and angry, Thomas, nerdy, always optimistic and forever telling intricate stories. Their trip becomes one of discovering friendship, and for Victor, learning who his father really was, forgiveness and understanding.
The Business of Fancydancing, based on Alexie’s poetry, was quite different. One of the successes of Smoke Signals for me was that I could really relate to Victor and Thomas. In Fancydancing, the main characters Aristotle Joseph and Seymour Polatkin are defined, yet for me, Alexie failed to create them as fully rounded characters deserving of my empathy. I believe one of the problems is the film has far too many special “techniques” or whatever one would like to call it. I get the metaphor of Seymour fancydancing, and other characters dancing in simpler blankets or more traditional Indian dress intermittently throughout the movie, but overall, there were just too many different moviemaking techniques jostling my sensibilities around. From the periodic one-on-one interviews with Seymour, to the washed-out-lighting home camera effects from the past, to Mouse playing violin in the background, or Aristotle singing in Seymour’s ear – the constant jumble of treatments really took away from the continuity of the story. And I wanted to like this movie.
Here’s a fine case of not judging a book by its cover, or better said, an author by her previous book. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd was going to be a hard act to follow. There isn’t a soul I know who didn’t think Bees wasn’t one of the best books they’d read in a long, long time. When The Mermaid Chair arrived on the scene, there seemed to be a consensus that, before even reading it, Kidd’s new book would not be able to compare to The Secret Life of Bees.
Still A Dreamer 