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THE MERMAID CHAIR

by Sue Monk Kidd ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 2005

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

According to Kidd’s follow-up to The Secret Life of Bees , there’s nothing like a little soulful adultery to get an anemic marriage back on track.

Atlanta housewife and part-time artist Jessie Sullivan has been in a mild funk since her daughter Dee started college. Then she and her sensitive but controlling husband, Hugh, receive news that her obsessively devout mother, Nelle, has purposely cut off a finger—whether out of misplaced piety or mental illness isn’t known. With trepidation, Jessie returns to the South Carolina barrier island where she was raised to care for Nelle. She still carries guilt that a spark from the pipe she had given her father supposedly caused the boating accident that killed him when she was nine. Since then, Nelle has cooked for the neighboring monks, whose patron saint, Saint Senare, was an Irish mermaid before she found God. Jessie meets and is immediately attracted to the newest addition to the monastery, Father Thomas. A former lawyer whose wife and unborn child died in a freak accident, Father Thomas, who has yet to take his final vows, is in charge of the rookery, so he spends his days paddling alone down various creeks. Soon, Jessie is paddling with him while delving into her own sensuality and selfhood. No pure lust, but a spiritual coupling has taken place as evidenced, at least, by the pictures she creates of a mermaid diving deep toward the ocean floor, while there’s much talk of being “damned and saved both.” Jesse learns she isn’t to blame for her father’s death, but her relief is short-lived, since Nelle cuts off another finger. Loyal Hugh shows up to help and discovers Jessie’s affair. Once the truth of Jessie’s father’s death is revealed, Nelle begins a real recovery, while a wiser, stronger Jessie returns to the ever-patient Hugh, who vows to be a better husband.

Pub Date: April 5, 2005

ISBN: 0-670-03394-4

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2005

RELIGIOUS FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Sue Monk Kidd

by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor

WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES

by Georgia Hunter ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2017

Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.

Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.

Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “ You’ll get only one shot at this ,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “ Don’t botch it .” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “ That form is a deal breaker ,” he tells himself. “ It’s life and death .” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.

Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9

Page Count: 416

Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016

RELIGIOUS FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ

by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018

The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...

An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.

Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowi erer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas . She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.

Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018

ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018

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by Heather Morris

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BookBrowse Reviews The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

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The Mermaid Chair

by Sue Monk Kidd

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'Full of sultry, magical descriptions of life in the South, is sure to be another hit for Kidd.' Novel

From the book jacket : In her much-anticipated new novel, Kidd ( The Secret Life of Bees ) has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legion of fans and cement her reputation as one of the most remarkable writers at work today. Inside the abbey of a Benedictine monastery on tiny Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion. Jessie Sullivan's conventional life has been "molded to the smallest space possible." So when she is called home to cope with her mother's startling and enigmatic act of violence, Jessie finds herself relieved to be apart from her husband, Hugh. Jessie loves Hugh, but on Egret Island—amid the gorgeous marshlands and tidal creeks—she becomes drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is mere months from taking his final vows. What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother's tormented past, but most of all, as Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, she will find a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right.  Comment : The Mermaid Chair is the sort of book that I would rather not admit to having enjoyed because I like to think of myself still as 21 years old, but the reality is that soul searching mid-life crisis novels such as this hold a certain appeal to me these days! If you find yourself reflecting on your life and the possibility of one last wild fling, hurry out and buy yourself a copy of The Mermaid Chair - because such things are usually much better in the hands of a novelist than in reality! 'Whit's crisis of faith; and Nelle's tormented reckoning with the past will resonate with many readers. This emotionally rich novel, full of sultry, magical descriptions of life in the South, is sure to be another hit for Kidd.' -- Publishers Weekly (starred review) 'Bestselling Kidd has a gift for language, but the saccharine aftertaste won't go away.' -- Kirkus Reviews Sue Monk Kidd says that the idea for The Mermaid Chair began one day when a friend mentioned that she'd seen a 'mermaid chair' in a small English church - it had been there for centuries but nobody knew why.  Sue says she was riveted and knew right then and there that she would write a novel called The Mermaid Chair , but that she didn't have a clue what it would be about! I believe that the chair her friend would have seen is located in a small church in the village of Zennor, Cornwall, England.  This is a side view of the bench seat which is about big enough to seat two people.

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Mermaid Chair (Kidd)

The Mermaid Chair Sue Monk Kidd, 2005 Penguin Group USA 368 pp. ISBN-13: 9780143036692

Summary In her remarkable follow-up to the widely acclaimed The Secret Life of Bees , Sue Monk Kidd tells a beautiful and haunting story centered around forty-two-year-old Jessie Sullivan, a woman in quiet crisis whose return home to the island of a mermaid saint becomes a pilgrimage to self-awakening. In this powerful exploration of mid-life marriage and the intersection of the spiritual and the erotic in the feminine soul, Kidd illustrates the sacredness of belonging to oneself and the healing mercy of love and forgiveness.

Jessie's journey begins in the winter of 1988 when she receives an early-morning call from her mother Nelle's close friend Kat. Nelle has inexplicably and deliberately severed her own finger and Kat is calling to ask Jessie to return home to Egret Island, South Carolina, to care for her.

Though Jessie has been somewhat estranged from her mother for the last five years, she departs immediately—realizing that despite the disturbing circumstances awaiting her, she feels relief in leaving and having some time away from her husband, Hugh, a psychiatrist. Jessie loves Hugh, but twenty years into their picture-perfect marriage, with their only child away at college, she has begun to feel a groundswell of restlessness or, as she puts it, “the feeling of time passing, of being postponed, pent up.” Understanding herself primarily through her relationship to her husband and to her daughter, she is baffled by her discontent, by her sudden resistance to creating her small “art boxes” that have been her only tenuous link to the passion she once had to be an artist. She has lost “the little river of sparks” that runs through life, but mostly she has lost her deep connection to herself.

Once on Egret Island, Jessie finds herself ill equipped to handle her mother's continuing erratic behavior, much less to comprehend what lies behind her enigmatic act of self-violence. She senses that it's related to her father's death-a death that is still surrounded by unanswered questions thirty years later. As she tries to piece together Nelle's tormented past, Jessie reconnects with the two women who, along with her mother, once formed an inseparable female trio, bound together by rituals and secrets only they shared. When Jessie finally discovers the truth about Nelle and her father's death, it unlocks a dark, painful secret. Its revelation, however, will begin to heal the relationships in both women's lives.

Near Nelle's home is a Benedictine monastery that houses a mysterious and beautiful chair carved with mermaids and dedicated to Saint Senara, who, legend says, was a mermaid before her conversion. The abbey and the chair have always been special to Jessie. There, she meets Whit, a junior monk who sought refuge at the monastery after suffering a devastating loss. Only months away from taking his final vows, he isn't completely certain whether he has come to the abbey in search of God or in search of immunity from life.

Jessie's powerful attraction to Whit awakens an immense sexual and spiritual longing inside her, as well as a pulsing new sense of aliveness. Amid the seductive salt marshes and tidal creeks of the island, she abandons herself to the long-buried passions of her body and the yearnings of her creative spirit and embarks upon a descent into her own uncharted and shadowy depths in search of a place inside herself that is truly her own. Torn between the force of her desire and her enduring marriage, Jessie grapples with excruciating choices, ultimately creating a “marriage” with herself.

In this novel Kidd takes on the darker, more complex elements of the psyche and human relationships-spiritual emptiness, infidelity, death, mental illness and euthanasia—with a steady gaze and compassion not often found in modern fiction. Above all, The Mermaid Chair is a book that embraces the sensual pull of the mermaid and the divine pull of the saint, the commitment to oneself and the commitment to a relationship—and their ability to thrive simultaneously in every woman's soul. Kidd's candid and redemptive portrayal of a woman lost in the “smallest spaces” of her life ultimately becomes both an affirmation of ordinary married love and the sacredness of always saving a part of your soul for yourself. ( From the publisher .)

About the Author Bio • Birth—August 12, 1948 • Where—Sylvester, Georgia, USA • Education—B.S., Texas Christian University • Awards—Poets and Writers Award; Katherine Anne Porter       Award • Currently—lives in Charleston, South Carolina

Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, The Secret Life of Bees , spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than four million copies, and was chosen as the 2004 Book Sense Paperback Book of the Year and Good Morning America's "Read This!" Book Club pick. She is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Poets & Writers award. She lives near Charleston, South Carolina.

More Sue Monk Kidd first made her mark on the literary circuit with a pair of highly acclaimed, well-loved memoirs detailing her personal spiritual development. However, it was a work of fiction, The Secret Life of Bees , that truly solidified her place among contemporary writers. Although Kidd is no longer writing memoirs, her fiction is still playing an important role in her on-going journey of spiritual self-discovery.

Despite the fact that Kidd's first published books were nonfiction works, her infatuation with writing grew out of old-fashioned, Southern-yarn spinning. As a little girl in the little town of Sylvester, Georgia, Kidd thrilled to listen to her father tell stories about "mules who went through cafeteria lines and a petulant boy named Chewing Gum Bum," as she says on her web site. Inspired by her dad's tall tales, Kidd began keeping a journal that chronicled her everyday experiences.

Such self-scrutiny surely gave her the tools she needed to pen such keenly insightful memoirs as When the Hearts Waits and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter , both tracking her development as both a Christian and a woman. "I think when you have an impulse to write memoir you are having an opportunity to create meaning of your life," she told Barnes & Noble.com, "to articulate your experience; to understand it in deeper ways... And after a while, it does free you from yourself, of having to write about yourself, which it eventually did for me."

Once Kidd had worked the need to write about herself out of her system, she decided to get back to the kind of storytelling that inspired her to become a writer in the first place. Her debut novel The Secret Life of Bees showed just how powerfully the gift of storytelling charges through Kidd's veins. The novel has sold more than 4.5 million copies, been published in over twenty languages, and spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list.

Even as Kidd has shifted her focus from autobiography to fiction, she still uses her writing as a means of self-discovery. This is especially evident in her latest novel The Mermaid Chair , which tells the story of a woman named Jessie who lives a rather ordinary life with her husband Hugh until she meets a man about to take his final vows at a Benedictine monastery. Her budding infatuation with Brother Thomas leads Jessie to take stock of her life and resolve an increasingly intense personal tug-of-war between marital fidelity and desire.

Kidd feels that through telling Jessie's story, she is also continuing her own journey of self-discovery, which she began when writing her first books. "I think there is some part of that journey towards one's self that I did experience. I told that particular story in my book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and it is the story of a woman's very-fierce longing for herself. The character in The Mermaid Chair Jessie has this need to come home to herself in a much deeper way," Kidd said, "to define herself, and I certainly know that longing."

Extras Kidd lives beside a salt marsh near Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, Sandy, a marriage and individual counselor in private practice. ( From Barnes & Noble .)

Book Reviews Jessie Sullivan, the protagonist of this rewarding second novel by the author of the bestselling The Secret Life of Bees , is awakened by a shrilling phone late one night to horrifying news: her mother, who has never recovered from her husband Joe's death 33 years earlier, has chopped off her own finger with a cleaver. Frantic with worry, and apprehensive at the thought of returning to the small island where she grew up in the shadow of her beloved father's death and her mother's fanatical Catholicism, 42-year-old Jessie gets on the next plane, leaving behind her psychiatrist husband, Hugh, and college-age daughter, Dee. On tiny Egret Island, off the coast of South Carolina, Jessie tries to care for her mother, Nelle, who is not particularly eager to be taken care of. Jessie gets help from Nelle's best friends, feisty shopkeeper Kat and Hepzibah, a dignified chronicler of slave history. To complicate matters, Jessie finds herself strangely relieved to be free of a husband she loves—and wildly attracted to Brother Thomas, a junior monk at the island's secluded Benedictine monastery. Confusing as the present may be, the past is rearing its head, and Jessie, who has never understood why her mother is still distraught by Joe's death, begins to suspect that she's keeping a terrible secret. Writing from the perspective of conflicted, discontented Jessie, Kidd achieves a bold intensity and complexity that wasn't possible in The Secret Life of Bees , narrated by teenage Lily. Jessie's efforts to cope with marital stagnation; Whit's crisis of faith; and Nelle's tormented reckoning with the past will resonate with many readers. This emotionally rich novel, full of sultry, magical descriptions of life in the South, is sure to be another hit for Kidd. Publishers Weekly

According to Kidd's follow-up to The Secret Life of Bees , there's nothing like a little soulful adultery to get an anemic marriage back on track. Atlanta housewife and part-time artist Jessie Sullivan has been in a mild funk since her daughter Dee started college. Then she and her sensitive but controlling husband, Hugh, receive news that her obsessively devout mother, Nelle, has purposely cut off a finger—whether out of misplaced piety or mental illness isn't known. With trepidation, Jessie returns to the South Carolina barrier island where she was raised to care for Nelle. She still carries guilt that a spark from the pipe she had given her father supposedly caused the boating accident that killed him when she was nine. Since then, Nelle has cooked for the neighboring monks, whose patron saint, Saint Senare, was an Irish mermaid before she found God. Jessie meets and is immediately attracted to the newest addition to the monastery, Father Thomas. A former lawyer whose wife and unborn child died in a freak accident, Father Thomas, who has yet to take his final vows, is in charge of the rookery, so he spends his days paddling alone down various creeks. Soon, Jessie is paddling with him while delving into her own sensuality and selfhood. No pure lust, but a spiritual coupling has taken place as evidenced, at least, by the pictures she creates of a mermaid diving deep toward the ocean floor, while there's much talk of being "damned and saved both." Jesse learns she isn't to blame for her father's death, but her relief is short-lived, since Nelle cuts off another finger. Loyal Hugh shows up to help and discovers Jessie's affair. Once the truth of Jessie's father's death is revealed, Nelle begins a real recovery, while a wiser, stronger Jessie returns to the ever-patient Hugh, who vows to be a better husband. Bestselling Kidd ( The Secret Life of Bees, 2002) has a gift for language, but the saccharine aftertaste won't go away. Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions 1. How does a woman like Jessie become “molded to the smallest space possible”? What signs might appear in her life? What did Jessie mean when she said part of the problem was her chronic inability to astonish herself?

2. Jessie comes to believe that an essential problem in her marriage is not that she and Hugh have grown apart, but that they have grown “too much together.” What do you think she means by that? How important is it for Jessie to find her “solitude of being”? How does a woman balance apartness and togetherness in a relationship?

3. How would you describe Nelle before and after her husband's death? What is your interpretation of the mysterious factors that led her to cut off her finger? What do her fingers symbolize? How does the myth of Sedna—the Inuit mermaid whose severed fingers became the first sea creatures—shed light on Nelle's state of mind?

4. Jessie feels that she has found a soul mate in Whit. Do you find this word inviting or repellent? When we speak of looking for a soul mate, what do we mean? Is there really such a thing?

5. Why do you think Whit came to the monastery? Would you describe him as having a crisis of faith? In what ways does he vacillate between falling into life and transcending it? What do you think of his decision at the end about whether to leave or to stay?

6. Islands are often places of personal trial and distillation of self—such as Shakespeare's The Tempest or Golding's Lord of the Flies . What are the emotional islands upon which each character is stranded? What is the significance of the Egret Island setting? How does each character finally escape the island of his or her making? What does the trial on the enchanted island reveal about each character?

7. St. Senara only becomes a saint once an abbot hides her fish tail and prohibits her from returning to the sea. On one hand, she has lost her wild nature and freedom to swim away, but on the other hand, she has gained sainthood among the humans she has grown to love. What is the significance of this tale in Jessie's life? When she leaves her husband to return to Egret Island, is she the wild mermaid or the stranded saint? How does the duality of the mermaid and the saint play out in women's lives? Can a woman contain both? Why do you think mystics and poets have drawn comparisons between sensual delight and godly delight?

8. The mermaid chair is a central image in the novel. What does it symbolize? What role does it play in the novel? In Jessie's life? In her father's? How does it become a place of dying and rebirth for both of them, literally and figuratively?

9. How would you describe Jessie's relationship with her father? How did having an absent father affect her? How did it affect her relationship to Hugh? What do you think Kidd was suggesting by the image of the whirley girl?

10. Jessie breaks away from creating her tiny art boxes and begins to paint, finding her true gift. Why is she unable to take up her authentic creative life before this? What role do her paintings play in her metamorphosis? How does Jessie's series of paintings of diving women reflect her own experience? What role does the motif of diving play in the novel?

11. The novel celebrates the hallowed bonds of women and suggests how a true community of women can become a maternal circle that nurtures a woman toward self-realization and helps her to give birth to a new life. How do Kat, Hepzibah, and even Benne play a role in Jessie's transformation? What has been the importance of female communities in your own life?

12. In perhaps the most moving and cathartic moment in the novel, Jessie goes to Bone Yard beach and speaks vows of commitment to herself—“'Jessie. I take you, Jessie...for better or worse...to love and to cherish.'” What does it mean to make a “marriage” to your self? Paradoxically, Jessie discovered that belonging to herself allowed her to belong more truly to Hugh. Does an inviolate commitment to oneself enhance one's commitment to a relationship?

13. In your mind, was Jessie's father's death a sin? Jessie isn't sure if choosing to end one's life in order to spare oneself and one's family extreme suffering was horning in on God's territory and usurping “the terrifying power to say when,” or whether it was usurping God's deep heart by laying down one's life as a sacrifice. What do you think?

14. The Mermaid Chair suggests that a love affair may be a common response to a marriage that has lost its way, but that in the end it is not a solution. In what way do you think the novel is a cautionary tale? Why do you think Jessie is unable to heed the warnings from Kat and Hepzibah? How could Jessie have found awakening without betraying her marriage?

15. Upon her return home, Jessie says, “There would be no grand absolution, only forgiveness meted out in these precious sips. It would well up from Hugh's heart in spoonfuls and he would feed it to me. And it would be enough.” Why does Jessie return to Hugh? Why is Hugh able to accept her back into his life? How has their relationship changed since she left for Egret Island? How has Jessie changed? ( Questions issued by publisher .) top of page

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The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

• Publication Date: March 7, 2006
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin
• ISBN-10: 0143036696
• ISBN-13: 9780143036692
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Sue Monk Kidd

The mermaid chair.

•  Published by Viking, 2005 •  # 1 New York Times Bestseller •  Winner of the Quill Award for General Fiction

Inside the church of a Benedictine monastery on Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.

When Jessie Sullivan is summoned home to the island to cope with her eccentric mother’s seemingly inexplicable behavior, she is living a conventional life with her husband, Hugh, a life “molded to the smallest space possible.” Jessie loves Hugh, but once on the island, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk about to take his final vows. Amid a rich community of unforgettable island women and the exotic beauty of marshlands, tidal creeks, and majestic egrets, Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, with a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right and the immutable force of home and marriage.

What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother’s tormented past, but most of all, it will allow Jessie to awaken to herself, as she explores the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic. A vividly imagined love story between a woman and a monk, a woman and her husband, and ultimately a woman and her own soul, The Mermaid Chair is a transcendent tale of self-discovery.

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The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

• Publication Date: March 7, 2006
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Penguin
• ISBN-10: 0143036696
• ISBN-13: 9780143036692
• About the Book
• Reading Guide (PDF)
• Critical Praise

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The Mermaid Chair

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005

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The Little Mermaid review: Halle Bailey swims (and sings) her way to stardom

The seaweed is actually greener this time.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

When it comes to thingamabobs, Disney 's got plenty, but as far as saving graces go, one tale rises to the surface.

In 1989, when The Little Mermaid made its initial box office bow, it reinvigorated Disney animation and launched what has been dubbed the Disney Renaissance. It marked the studio's first animated feature-length hit since 1977's The Rescuers and their first animated fairy tale since 1959's Sleeping Beauty, helping the floundering studio reestablish itself as a leader in the space. What's more, the music and lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman brought Broadway-style structure to the animated film, evolving the movie musical.

Nowadays, Disney is once again at a crossroads. The streaming bubble is bursting, the theatrical model remains in flux after the pandemic disruption, and an un-slaked thirst for quarterly profit growth is pushing the company to rely ever more heavily on provable IP. Disney has come under fire for a reliance on its own properties, the regurgitation of its animated hits in live-action remakes and lackluster churn of Marvel and Star Wars product. But a red-headed mermaid is here to save the day once more with a new take on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale.

This iteration of The Little Mermaid is the studio's freshest catch since it kicked off this live-action trend with 2015's Cinderella, featuring refreshing storytelling that captures the magic of the original. Director Rob Marshall at last has found material that fits him as well as 2002's Chicago, his splashy theatrical style merging with the tropes of musical comedy and something darker around the edges. He even finds a spot for his "they're happening in someone's head" approach to numbers in new track "For the First Time," giving a voiceless Ariel a musical inner monologue.

As the titular mermaid yearning for a life beyond the sea, Ariel is at the heart of this. In Halle Bailey , Disney and Marshall mint a new star. Bailey is breathtaking as Ariel. Her rendition of "Part of Your World" (the best "I want" song ever written) transmogrifies the already classic tune into something as otherworldly as undiscovered sea life. But it's her altogether human performance that makes it impossible not to fall in love with her. Her Ariel is less a tempestuous teenager with a crush than she is a blossoming and curious young woman.

While Ariel's interest in the human world beyond Prince Eric was always implicit in the story, David Magee's screenplay and Bailey's visible hunger for a world beyond her gilded net makes it abundantly clear that Ariel's fascination with life on land isn't driven purely by interest in a man. Instead, she and Eric (a dashing Jonah Hauer-King ) are drawn to each other because of their mutual curiosity for worlds beyond their own. A new, quietly drawn scene where Eric shows the voiceless Ariel the wonders of his own trove of treasures untold fills in this point of connection between them with subtlety and beauty.

Much has been made of the film's attempts to erase any potentially problematic content, changing a lyric in "Kiss the Girl" to address consent concerns and eliminating the "body language" section of "Poor Unfortunate Souls." While they are unnecessary edits, they're not glaring and pass so quickly that unless you have sung this soundtrack from start to finish in the shower for most of your life, you will scarcely notice them.

What is marvelous is this more diverse world of characters and a new Disney princess in Bailey. Her Ariel is so radiant that she seems to possess the properties of bioluminescence, absolutely glowing in every scene. Like the screen actors of the past who began as silent creatures, conveying the panoply of human emotion with looks and gestures rather than dialogue, Bailey has a similar task for a portion of the film when Ariel gives up her voice. It's engrossing to watch how much story she can tell with only her eyes or the tilt of her head. It's a type of performance and incumbent stardom we rarely see anymore.

Eric is given more depth here, as well, his status as a shipwrecked orphan and interest in the world beyond sturdily grounded in Hauer-King's performance. His new song "Wild Uncharted Waters" — from Menken and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda — puts Eric's journey in parallel to Ariel's. Hauer-King elevates the character beyond a bland handsome face, while never pulling focus from Bailey's star turn.

Besides, Bailey's true foil isn't Hauer-King, it's Daveed Diggs as the voice of Sebastian, the put-upon crab tasked with watching over her. Diggs rose to fame as the original Lafayette and Jefferson in Broadway's Hamilton , but he's parlayed that breakout into a range of roles. Where Lafayette and Jefferson were egotistical bombasts, Diggs' Sebastian is a neurotic crustacean with a heart far softer than his shell. His vocal performance is both funny and tender, lending the overwhelmed crab more dignity and humanity than his animated predecessor. He delivers his feature number, "Under the Sea," with glee and precision, resulting in a riotous air of celebration.

"Under the Sea" is the film's high-water mark — featuring choreography from more realistic sea life, including schools of fish, sea stars, and jellyfish, executing Broadway-level dance moves. The film credits the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the number evokes the Black joy and culture of the legendary dance company in a visual expression of the Caribbean timbre of the tune. It's a visual feast for the eyes, a veritable seafood buffet with swirling tableaus rife with vibrant coral and flashy fins. This chromatic kaleidoscope of sea life is a work of art unto itself, an irresistible backdrop for the film's iconic score and dazzling performances.

As sea witch Ursula, Melissa McCarthy is as enrapturing as her tentacles. She reels back some of her signature gross-out schtick and instead goes full drag-queen fabulous in a performance that feels like Drag Race by way of Norma Desmond. Marshall contains McCarthy's chaotic energy, allowing it to burst out in measured moments. Her Ursula is equal parts villainy and glamor, becoming something truly terrifying in her climactic transformation.

Magee's screenplay gives Ursula a more fleshed-out backstory as Triton's sister, but it could go further, as we never fully understand the tension and relationship between the two. That is partly the fault of Javier Bardem, who is the film's weakest link as a rather one-note King of the Sea, relying on his general air of menace. It's a disappointing turn from him, particularly given that Triton's arc should be one of the story's most compelling.

Awkwafina is appropriately grating as Scuttle, but in that, she's too reliant on her acting persona to take the place of character work. The new songs, from Menken and Miranda, largely fade into the background, overshadowed by the original score's classics, but "The Scuttlebutt," a rap number for Scuttle and Sebastian, is a standout. Miranda's signature style is abundantly evident and both Awkwafina and Diggs get to showcase their chops. (Though, it would've been nice for Diggs' extraordinary prowess and speed as a rapper to receive more of a showcase throughout the song.)

On the whole, The Little Mermaid does what past live-action remakes haven't: justify its existence beyond a blatant cash grab. It's not the new songs or even the dazzling visuals breathing new life into this watery world that do it. It's Bailey, her singular performance as Ariel, and the opportunity to give the world a Disney princess for a new generation, with all of the Mouse House whimsy on one side of the scales, and a depth and humanity that feels neither preachy nor performative on the other.

The human world, it's a mess, but with Halle Bailey, life under the sea is better than anything Disney live-action has done in nearly a decade. A-

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Related content:

• How Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides influenced The Little Mermaid
• Hear Halle Bailey sing 'Part of Your World' from The Little Mermaid
• The Little Mermaid 's Halle Bailey explains why Ariel's iconic hair flip was hard to pull off

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The Mermaid Chair: A Novel Hardcover – April 5, 2005

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What inspires the yearning for a soul mate? Few writers have explored, as Kidd does, the lush, unknown region of the feminine soul where the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic exists. The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body; one that illuminates a woman’s self-awakening with the brilliance and power that only a writer of Kidd’s ability could conjure.

• Print length 335 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Viking
• Publication date April 5, 2005
• Dimensions 6.25 x 1 x 8.75 inches
• ISBN-10 0670033944
• ISBN-13 978-0670033942
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com review.

By boldly tackling such major themes as love, betrayal, grief, and forgiveness, The Mermaid Chair forces readers to question whether moral issues can always be interpreted in black or white. It is this ability to so gracefully present multiple sides of a story that reinforces Kidd's reputation as a well-respected modern literary voice. --Gisele Toueg

From Publishers Weekly

From bookmarks magazine.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist

— Publisher's Weekly

— Booklist Magazine

“It takes a rare and mysterious novel to speak to our souls in so many ways that we return to the book again and again for refreshment and renewal. Sue Monk Kidd created that kind of magic in The Secret Life of Bees , and her new novel promises to have the same effect….

About the Author

Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved., product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Viking; Later Printing edition (April 5, 2005)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 335 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0670033944
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0670033942
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.25 x 1 x 8.75 inches
• #747 in Religious Romance (Books)
• #3,338 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
• #19,331 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Sue monk kidd.

Sue Monk Kidd's debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than six million copies in the United States, was turned into both an award-winning major motion picture and musical, and has been translated into thirty-six languages. Her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, was a number one New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a television movie. The Invention of Wings, Kidd's third novel, was an Oprah's Book Club 2.0 pick, and also a number one New York Times bestseller.

Her most recent novel, The Book of Longings, was published in paperback on March 23, 2021. Released in 2020 to widespread critical and reader acclaim, it was an immediate bestseller and book club favorite. It has been translated into 17 languages thus far.

Sue is also an acclaimed memoirist, with titles including The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, her groundbreaking work on religion and feminism, as well as the New York Times bestseller Traveling with Pomegranates, written with her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor. She lives in North Carolina.

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Rihanna, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift Missed the Met Gala

Fashion’s biggest night had to go on without some of its scene-stealing stars from previous years.

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By Callie Holtermann

• May 6, 2024

In the week leading up to the Met Gala, tabloids volleyed predictions about Taylor Swift’s possible attendance: She would be there with her football player boyfriend, Travis Kelce! Actually, she wouldn’t ! She might go but leave Mr. Kelce at home !

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Callie Holtermann reports on style and pop culture for The Times. More about Callie Holtermann

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Zendaya Makes Two Arrivals: The actress wore a second John Galliano design to make a late (re)entrance at the Met Gala . The first was a custom Maison Margiela couture dress he created specifically for her.

A Fitting Literary Inspiration: In 1962, J.G. Ballard published “The Garden of Time,” a short story about aristocrats overrun by “an immense rabble.” It was a fitting but ironic choice as this year’s  dress-code theme .

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