Caterwaul's Book Review

Caterwaul, one of our lovely librarians over at the Linden Branch, has a great review of Sue Monk Kidd's, The Mermaid Chair, currently the featured book on the library's homepage:

I nominate this book for having one of the best first lines ever: “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.” I pulled this book off the shelf for its intriguing title. Mermaid chair? What is that? It made it to my “must read” pile because it is written by the talented author of The Secret Life of Bees. I kept reading it after my lunch hour because of that first line. I had to know how this woman fell in love with a monk, why she did, and what happened! Jessie Sullivan is going back to Egret Island (some ambiguously located island off the coast of South Carolina), to help her mother. Why? Because her mother appears to have gotten insane enough to perhaps be purposely causing herself harm. She did, after all, cut off her own finger (the mother). As Jessie tries to piece together what happened to bring her mother to the point of self-mutilation, she also begins to unravel the mystery behind her own father’s death when she was young, and the odd connection between her family and the monastery. She also, of course, meets and finds herself attracted to one of the monks. There are a few interspersed “from his point of view” chapters about Brother Thomas throughout the book.

Keep looking here for more reviews from Caterwaul to help you find good books to read for the Summer Reading Club!