The Mermaid Chair

The Mermaid Chair earns a 3.25. (I explained my book ratings in February.) The novel deals with, once again, a marriage that is failing and quite frankly I'm growing bored with this theme. People are constantly giving in to their baser instincts and it is usually leads to predictable results. Of course, it's not everyday the newly discovered love interest is a monk so that is an unexpected spin on an otherwise old tale. And the real story starts only after someone (I'm not going to reveal who) lops off a finger and plants it in the ground. Kidd's characters are flawed, which makes them genuine but the appearance of one character speaking Gullah, a Creole blend of Elizabethan English and African languages, is out of place and makes little sense, other than to make a strange story even more strange. It is this nonsensical addition that knocks the rating from a solid 3.