"The Mermaid Chair"

After reading The Secret Life of Bees I got Sue Monk Kidd's The Mermaid Chair and read that also. I enjoyed this book just as much.

It had elements of The Bridges of Madison County. Jessie's been married for twenty years and has a grown daughter in college. She's facing a mid-life crisis with her marriage gone stale, and is seeking something she's not sure of. At the same time, her mother, who has been steeped in excessive religiosity since Jessie's father died, has erupted into madness, cutting off her own finger.

Jessie goes to her mother without her husband Hugh, a psychiatrist and a bit of a know it all. The island she grew up on, Egret Island off the coast of South Carolina, has a peculiar custom. There's a monastery there to a St. Senara. Legend has it that this saint was a mermaid who converted to Catholicism, and became a saint. There's a carved "mermaid chair" kept at the church that is carried to the docks and used to bless the fleet on St. Senara's Day.

While she's trying to help her mother and to unravel the puzzle of her mother's self-destructive act, Jessie falls in love with one of the Benedictine monks, Brother Thomas, who has not yet taken his final vows. Jessie and Brother Thomas (Whit) find they have tragedy in common. Jessie's father died at sea when she was nine years old, supposedly blown to bits by a spark from the pipe she gave him. Jessie has lived with a terrible sense of guilt for all these years. Brother Thomas, a former attorney, has joined the monastery to escape from the pain of losing his wife and unborn daughter in a car crash.

The story is permeated by mermaid and siren symbolism and imagery, just as bees permeate the story of The Secret Life of Bees. Jessie, away from her husband and having instigated a separation, begins to find herself, to expand and be the artist she has always longed to be. She realizes that she has pushed herself into too small a space, always putting Hugh and their daughter first and her own amibitions and desires second. She's very similar to Francesca in Bridges in this respect.

The lovers are both "saved and damned" by their connection. Their brief affair forces them both to look at what they really want in life and what they have been hiding from. The mystery of Jessie's father's death is revealed, too, and brings a healing both to her and her mother.

I'm quickly becoming an avid Sue Monk Kidd fan, and I look forward to her future novels.