The Mermaid Chair
The No. 1 New York Times bestseller
-
-
3.9 • 16 Ratings
-
-
- £2.99
Publisher Description
'Highly charged . . . full of sexual and spiritual desire. Every bit as moving and convincing as The Secret Life of Bees' Mirror
The Mermaid Chair: The No. 1 New York Times bestseller and award-winning novel, from the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings. A beautiful and haunting exploration of human relationships, personal fulfilment and spirituality.
'Beautiful writing . . . Kidd's characters cherish storytelling' USA Today
'It's hard to put this book down for little things like sleeping and eating' Elle
In her forties, and married for half her life, Jessie Sullivan honestly believes that she is happy. She has a lovely home, a dependable husband and an accomplished and adored teenage daughter. But when shocking news about her mother compels Jessie to visit the island where she grew up, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a Benedictine monk on the verge of taking his final vows.
Amidst the seductive beauty of the South Carolina salt marshes, Jessie is torn between powerful new longings and her enduring marriage. After all these years she is finally beginning to understand who she really is and where she belongs. But she has still to discover how much of her old life has a place in the new one.
What readers are saying about The Mermaid Chair:
'I was drawn in from the first sentence and felt emotionally attached to each and every one of the characters. Couldn't put it down; loved it' Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars
'The telling of the tale was thoughtful and very beautiful and I felt that I'd shared Jessie's journey' Amazon reviewer, 5 stars
'This is a wonderful novel, spellbinding with characters that you can wholly visualise and want to know. The writing is very strong and not for a long time have I remembered the style, flavour and feeling of a novelist's writing long after I've finished it' Amazon reviewer, 5 stars
'This book spoke right to my heart, right to the pull and tug of what it is to be a woman, a wife, a mother. This book is beautifully written and has become my favourite amongst the Sue Monk Kidd novels that I have devoured' Goodreads reviewer, 5 stars
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jessie Sullivan, the protagonist of this rewarding second novel by the author of the bestselling Secret Life of Bees, is awakened by a shrilling phone late one night to horrifying news: her mother, who has never recovered from her husband Joe's death 33 years earlier, has chopped off her own finger with a cleaver. Frantic with worry, and apprehensive at the thought of returning to the small island where she grew up in the shadow of her beloved father's death and her mother's fanatical Catholicism, 42-year-old Jessie gets on the next plane, leaving behind her psychiatrist husband, Hugh, and college-age daughter, Dee. On tiny Egret Island, off the coast of South Carolina, Jessie tries to care for her mother, Nelle, who is not particularly eager to be taken care of. Jessie gets help from Nelle's best friends, feisty shopkeeper Kat and Hepzibah, a dignified chronicler of slave history. To complicate matters, Jessie finds herself strangely relieved to be free of a husband she loves and wildly attracted to Brother Thomas, n Whit O'Conner, a junior monk at the island's secluded Benedictine monastery. Confusing as the present may be, the past is rearing its head, and Jessie, who has never understood why her mother is still distraught by Joe's death, begins to suspect that she's keeping a terrible secret. 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.
