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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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The Mermaid
Chair by Sue Monk Kidd |
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Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Magical The
success of Sue Kidd’s debut novel, Secret
Life of Bees, will lead many readers to pick up a copy of her new novel, The
Mermaid Chair. In this second novel, protagonist Jessie Sullivan is
called home to When he’d gone, I sat down in the
mermaid chair. It was hard and uncomfortable; some said it was made from a
single piece of birch, though I imagine that was just more apocrypha. I
pushed my spine to the back of the seat and felt my toes lift off the floor.
At the other end of the church, the monks began to chant. I could not tell if
it was in Latin. Their voices came in waves, flooding into the arched chapel. My thoughts must have been spiraling up
near the ceiling for a few minutes, soaring around with the chant, because
all of a sudden I felt my concentration yanked downward into my body, which I
realized was aroused and alive. I felt as if I were
running, but I was perfectly still. Everything around me seemed to blaze up
and breathe—colors, edges, the crumbs of light falling obliquely over my
shoulders. My hands were resting on the chair
arms, the place where the curving backs of the mermaids blend into their fish
tails. I moved my fingers around and underneath until I was gripping the nubby carving of the tails like a pair of reins. I had
the sensation inside of wanting to stop myself and at the same time to let
myself go. My feelings about Thomas had been such
a muddle. I’d let them slosh around in me like dirty water in the bottom of a
boat, but now, sitting in the mermaid chair, I felt the sediment settle to
the bottom, and everything was very clear to me. I wanted him with an almost
ferocious desire. Of course, the second I allowed myself
the thought, I felt a reverberating shock, complete disgust, and yet my shame
was inconsequential next to the force of my heart. It was as if something had
come bursting through a wall. I thought of the Magritte painting, the
locomotive thundering out of the fireplace. The antiphons rocked back and forth in
the air. I made myself take a long, slow breath, wanting the chair to live up
to its reputation and do something, to work a miracle and make the
overwhelming feelings evaporate. My desire, however, only seemed to grow. A
desire for someone who, I reminded myself, was not
Hugh. I didn’t even know him, really. And yet I felt as if I did. As if I
knew the deepest things inside him. That’s how it had been with Hugh all
those years ago. Like meeting someone I already knew. Falling in love with
Hugh had been like coming down with a terrible bout of insanity~ I’d been
consumed with him, almost sick with longing, unable to concentrate on
anything else, and there had been no way to cure it, not that I’d wanted to
then. There was no assertion of will when it came to falling in love. The
heart did what it did. It had its own autonomy, like a country unto itself. The air was poached with incense,
vibrating with medieval singing. I pictured Thomas out there in one of the
choir stalls and felt that same sense of being consumed,
engulfed with wanting. Worst of all, I could feel myself
giving over to all of this, to whatever was coming. To a Great Ecstasy and a
Great Catastrophe. The realization frightened me, which is
too mild a way of saying it. I’d not thought I was capable of falling in love
again. Earlier, when Thomas had asked me about
myself, I’d not been able to speak, and I wondered now if that was because my
sense of myself had been coming apart. I’d come to the island, and everything
had disintegrated. I closed my eyes. Stop this. Stop. I hadn’t meant it as a prayer, but when
I opened my eyes, I was struck with the idea that maybe it had been, and I
had a momentary surge of childish hope that now some power-that-be would be
obligated to grant my request. Then it would all stop. The feelings,
everything, and I would be absolved. Safe. Of course, I didn’t really believe
that. Sit in the chair. Say a prayer—t was juvenile. Yet even Thomas, who didn’t believe it
either, had said there was power in the chair. And there was. I felt it. I
felt it as an unraveling of some kind. ‘What if that was the real power in the
chair—its ability to undo you? What if it fished up the most forbidden
feelings inside a person and splayed them open? I stood up. Unable to face strolling
back through the church in front of the monks, I blundered around in the
ambulatory for a minute, opening the wrong doors before I located the
sacristy’s back door, leading out of the church. I hurried across the quadrangle, the
dense air hitting my face. Instead of the fog’s lifting, as it had tried to
do earlier when a lone curl of sunlight had appeared, the air had turned to
soup. When I stepped through the gate into
Mother’s backyard, I stopped, standing in the same spot where I’d lingered
that night Thomas had walked us back to the house. I placed my palms on top
of the brick wall and stared at the mortar, pocked with holes from the salt
air. Across the yard the oleander bushes swayed,
their greenness barely visible. He’s a monk, I thought. Wanting to believe that this would save
me. The
Mermaid Chair may be the perfect book to pack for a short flight, or a
trip to the beach this Summer. Steve Hopkins,
May 25, 2005 |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the June 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Mermaid Chair.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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