Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Best of 2024 ezine!

Beyond the Book: Background information when reading The Mermaid Chair

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reading Guide |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Read-Alikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

The Mermaid Chair

A Novel

by Sue Monk Kidd
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (6):
  • First Published:
  • Apr 1, 2005, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2006, 368 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Beyond the Book

This article relates to The Mermaid Chair

Print Review

Kidd was born and raised in the tiny town of Sylvester, Georgia. Her writing has been deeply influenced by place, and she mined her experiences of growing up in Sylvester when she wrote she mined her experiences of growing up in Sylvester when she wrote teachers, who described her as a 'born writer', she detoured into nursing ('partly due to a failure of courage and partly due to the cultural climate of the South in 1966') during her twenties.  However, in her thirties (now with a husband and two children) she felt the pull to return to writing and enrolled in a writing class.  One of her personal essays written for class was published in Guideposts Magazine and reprinted in Readers Digest, and thus began her career as a writer of personal experience articles with an inspirational bent, publishing several hundred articles, mainly in Guideposts Magazine.

Her first book was a spiritual memoir published in 1988, followed by a book on feminist theology, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (1996).  In 1997 she began writing her first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, which was published in 2002.  It spent 80 weeks on the NY Times bestseller list, has been published in more than 20 languages and has sold more than 3.5 million copies to date. 

She lives beside a salt marsh near Charleston, South Carolina with her husband Sandy and their black lab, Lily.

Filed under

This "beyond the book article" relates to The Mermaid Chair. It originally ran in April 2005 and has been updated for the March 2006 paperback edition. Go to magazine.

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access become a member today.
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Model Home
    Model Home
    by Rivers Solomon
    Rivers Solomon's novel Model Home opens with a chilling and mesmerizing line: "Maybe my mother is ...

BookBrowse Book Club

Book Jacket
In Our Midst
by Nancy Jensen
In Our Midst follows a German immigrant family’s fight for freedom after their internment post–Pearl Harbor.
Book Jacket
The Berry Pickers
by Amanda Peters
A four-year-old Mi'kmaq girl disappears, leaving a mystery unsolved for fifty years.
Who Said...

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Big Holiday Wordplay 2024

Enter Now

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.