The Mermaid Chair

Sue Monk Kidd

8/20/2005

Jessie and Hugh Sullivan have been married for 20 years. Their daughter left for her first year of college. When Jessie gets an early morning phone call from her mother's friend, she has to return to Egret Island to care for her mother. Jessie's mother, Nelle. Although Hugh is a psychiatrist, Jessie refuses his help and reluctantly returns to Egret Island to care for her obsessed, mentally ill mother.

Back on Egret Island, Jessie once again faces her past. She keeps returning to the day her father died when his boat, the Jess Sea, exploded because he was smoking the pipe she had given to him. She remembered her mother from before her father's death and after. Nelle, the cook for the monastery on the island, became a fanatic Catholic after her husband's death. Jessie opens up emotions she had been trying to forget.

Then there is Brother Thomas, the youngest monk at the monastery. Jessie discovers feelings and passions she had forgotten. As Jessie states in her introduction, when she fell from grace, she didn't fall, but dove. Between her mother, her separation from Hugh, and Brother Thomas, Jessie learns new things about herself and her family.

The first third to half of The Mermaid Chair went rather slowly, in my opinion. Jessie admits what will happen with her relationship with Brother Thomas at the beginning of the book. The book is basically her first person narration. I kept wanting her to come to her senses. I wanted to know why her mother, Nelle, cut off her own finger. I wanted to know what happened to Brother Thomas and whether he stayed at the monastery or gave it up before his final vows. I worried about Hugh and what Jessie had done to him and her marriage. The characters make this novel. The Mermaid Chair itself has an intriguing background and Egret Island has its draws, but it is the people in this book that made me keep coming back until I couldn't put it down any more.

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Notice: Sexual situations