Narrated largely by fictional 42 year old Jessie Dubois, unfaithful artist wife of a South Carolina psychiatrist, this novel is set mainly on a fictional island off the Atlantic coast of South Carolina in the 1980s. Sue Monk Kidd is a prolific South Carolina novelist, her most well-known work being The Secret Life of Bees, which if I recall correctly from reading it many years ago, had little to do with bees except as symbols of cooperation and communalism. I have not read any of the other 21 novels she has written. Symbolism is also a prominent feature of this story particularly that of mermaids, and the psychic meaning of dismembering and remembering.
It is difficult to discuss this work without giving away too much of the plot, which is not very complex but has some unpredictable peculiar twists. Jessie finds the intact tobacco pipe that was said to have caused her father’s death in a boat explosion at her mother’s house. This mystery remains unsolved until late in the story. There are not many characters, but they include Jessie’s mentally troubled mother, a tormented doubting lawyer cum monk at the monastery on the island, and a African American native woman who keeps the African slave traditions and folklore alive. From my medical perspective, Pick’s disease (frontotemporal dementia) with its devastating effects on one’s personality is accurately described.
Reading about the distinctive culture and folklore of the life on a small South Carolina coastal island is delightful, as it is loaded with symbolism and hidden meaning. Buried within the story is the deep emotional self-awareness of the various narrators, and a quest to find spiritual meaning and fulfillment in everyday encounters and events. There is abundant eroticism but it is treated delicately, entirely within the context of romantic love, not as a hormonally-driven midlife escape from a dull but conventional marriage.
The connection of the narrator to her inner self with constant self analysis, introspection and doubt seems to me to be a bit excessive, but it may just be that that trait seems (at least to me) to be more be prevalent in women than in men.
A quite enjoyable read, which I suspect women appreciate more than men do.
Thanks,
Leslie.
The Passionate Reader 