Book Review: The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

This book was written by the same author as The Secret Life of Bees. Before reading it I had gotten mixed reviews but all in all I *think* it was a good book. The jury is still out for me in a way because I'm not sure how I feel about the ending. On one hand I feel like I read the whole book just to get to the end and it sort of just ended but on the other I think there was a really good underlying moral to the story for married readers.

The book really has two different storylines going the whole time. One storyline is about a woman who has to go stay with her mom on Egret's Island where she grew up because her mother seems to be mentally ill. For some reason he mother has chopped off her finger. When the daughter arrives she finds her mother planting her finger in the soil. At the same time this occurs the daughter meets a very striking monk who also lives in a monastery on the island.

This is where the two storylines begin. The daughter (the whole book is written from her point of view) is married but has recently felt very distant from her marriage. Once she meets this monk she decides to tell her husband she wants to take some time apart. The majority of the book is then spent detailing her short lived relationship with the monk.

At the end of the book her mother chops off another finger and then everyone intervenes to discuss with her why this was done. She was trying to repent for helping her husband commit suicide many years prior because he did not want to succumb to a debilitating illness he had. The daughter then ends her relationship with the monk and she goes back home to her own husband and daughter.

All in all, I guess it was a good book if you consider the underlying morals but the ending sort of left something to be desired.