New & Current Releases
Archives: A-Z By Title
Archives: A-Z By Author
Advanced Search

All-Time High Scores
Best Of 2006
Best Of 2005
Best Of 2004
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Books In Our Forums

The Mermaid Chair
A Novel
by Sue Monk Kidd

2.4 based on 12 reviews read critic reviews how did we calculate this? based on 7 votes read user comments rate this book

Compare prices at pricegrabber.com

Buy it at powells.com

Buy it at amazon.com

Buy it at amazon.co.uk

• Official Author Site
• Official Publisher Site

Kidd follows The Secret Life of Bees with this novel set on South Carolina's Egret Island, where a woman undergoes a mid-life crisis while caring for her mother.

Viking, 352 pages
04/05/2005
$24.95

ISBN: 0670033944

Fiction
General Literature & Fiction

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Publishers Weekly

This emotionally rich novel, full of sultry, magical descriptions of life in the South, is sure to be another hit for Kidd.

Booklist Kristine Huntley

Kidd's second offering is just as gracefully written as her first and possesses an equally compelling story. [15 Feb 2005, p.1036]

Boston Globe Jessica Treadway

Readers who admired ''Bees" will likely find pleasure in Kidd's new combination of legend, personal history, spirituality, and humanity in quest of its own significance.

USA Today Susan Kelly

There are places in Mermaid in which the characters' assessment of their plight seems too pat, too enlightened. But these moments are far outweighed by others that ring true.

Houston Chronicle Susan Balee

If Bees was a girl's coming-of-age novel, Chair is a woman's coming-of-middle-age novel. Though the plot irritated me, the prose thrilled me. Kidd can really turn a phrase, and her descriptions of nature's archetypal elements are magnificent.

Kirkus Reviews

Bestselling Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees (2002) has a gift for language, but the saccharine aftertaste won't go away.

The New York Times Book Review Dana Kennedy

Kidd has a flair for making us see her characters with great vividness and immediacy, but there's a hint of ''Bridges of Madison County'' sentimentality in the idyllic romance she unfolds -- and the sense of duty that may doom it.

The Onion A.V. Club Tasha Robinson

The orderliness of Kidd's world is warmly reassuring, and her prose is catchy and enjoyable, especially wrapped as it is around a plot full of surprises. But her precision chafes.

The New Republic Sacha Zimmerman

Kidd's handling of symbolism is about as subtle as a hot flash on an icy February morning: Throughout a book littered with mermaid legends, saints, and allusions to sacrifice, she still feels compelled to spoon-feed us her "theme."

The New York Times Janet Maslin

If a computer had been asked to combine romance, spirituality, nature, tourism and violent self-mutilation it might have come up with something like this.

Entertainment Weekly Jennifer Reese

Try this for a batty and arresting first sentence: ''In the middle of my marriage, when I was above all Hugh's wife and Dee's mother, one of those unambiguous women with no desire to disturb the universe, I fell in love with a Benedictine monk.'' Alas, it's all downhill from there in Sue Monk Kidd's goopy follow-up to her best-selling 2002 debut, "The Secret Life of Bees."

Washington Post Donna Rifkind

In the end, the more-is-more approach that succeeded so audaciously in "The Secret Life of Bees" can do little to rescue Kidd's new book from its own puerile, waterlogged plot.

The average user rating for this book is 2.4 (out of 10) based on 7 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Lily Y gave it a0:
What an awful book! Totally unbelievable love story combined with some very unpleasant elements. I doubt it could have found a publisher let alone a positive review without the success of her previous excellent book.

ANN M gave it a2:
What a disappointment! I really liked "Bees" but "Chair" seemed like it had three legs.

Linda L gave it a2:
As one of the above reviews notes, the very first sentence stipulates that the centerpiece affair takes place "in the middle" of the narrator's marriage ... so you know it won't amount to anything! Even in the hackneyed terrain of mid-life crisis tales, this one is a bad Lifetime movie: Annoying characters, inscrutable motivations, tedious descriptions, and the dullest sex scenes imaginable.

Erika M gave it a3:
Ms. Kidd's attempt to define love through Brother Thomas and Jessie fails miserably as does her attempt to show Jessie's journey to self-discovery. Moreover, Ms. Kidd waffles on this ideal of love and self-discovery by betraying both, effectually sending Jessie back to a stifled and unfulfilled marriage. Nothing of substance here.

Linda D gave it a4:
My book group read this story and we agreed that while there are some interesting and quirky characters, and some moments of good writing, the story is vapid and rather silly. A real disappointment.

Shana R gave it a3:
If you are looking for a more-intelligent-bodice-ripper-than- most, it will probably provide a good read. If you are a lover of good lit and thought highly of Kidd's debut novel, save your money: This book is a pastiche, at best, and formulaic. Myth and symbol work in fiction when they are subtle and illuminating. Kidd's mermaid-and-mutilation themes are trite and saccherine, and the love story shows no knowledge of of human psyche. Very disappointing second novel!

Read more user comments...

Discuss this book in our forums