Monday 9 June 2014

Sue Monk Kidd

I have read these other books by Sue Monk Kidd:

I loved this book!
1964- peach farm in south Carolina
   Lily Owens was four when she accidently shot her mother (while her parents were fighting).  Her father was cruel and eventually Lily ran away with Rosaleen, the black maid.  Lily had three items that had belonged to her mother- gloves, a picture of her mother, and a picture of a black Madonna with printing on the back- Tiburon.  So they headed for Tiburon, saw the black Madonna on a jar of honey and found out where it was made. 
  Lily and Rosaleen were taken in by the calendar sisters- August, May, June, April.  August had been Lily's mother's nanny.  This household of women nurtured Lily as she was able to come to terms with her life.
  Marvellous descriptive writing!  Couldn't put it down!
"This is the last thing I remember with perfect crispness- her breath floating down to me like a tiny parachute, collapsing without a trace among the piles of shoes."
"Dragonflies darted back and forth like they were stitching up the air."
Strong, nurturing black women in the time of segregation.  Beautiful story!



 This novel takes place on Egret Island, off the coast of South Carolina.
  Jessie was 42, and unsatisfied with her life. 
Page 1: "I lived molded to the smallest space possible, my days the size of little beads that passed without passion through my fingers". 
  Well, she found passion!
  On this beautiful island, she fell in love with Brother Andrew. "The affair impregnated her with life"-  "I had the sense of being out on the furthest frontier of myself.  It was a surprisingly beautiful outpost".
Andrew told Jessie, ""We'll be damned and we'll be saved- both".  And, in fact, Jessie discovered 'a solitude of being' - through the relationship and the paintings she made.
   Fabulous language!  Wonderful characters!
But, in fact, Jessie did return to her husband."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". 
  Just a story about an affair, but the language, metaphors and symbolism swept me out to sea!


 This book is a mother/daughter memoir- set in Greece and France.  Ann, the daughter, is depressed about not being accepted to the University program that she applied for.  Sue, the mother,  is upset about the loss of the close relationship she had with her daughter and is also struggling with her own aging process.  
  Sue is obsessed with another mother/daughter relationship - Demeter and Persephone.  "I have come to believe it's really about that aperture opening,  It's the channel where the souls of a mother and a daughter open and flow as two separate souls, woman to woman.  It is, I know now, a place created through necessary loss and necessary search, and a reinvention of the whole relationship."
  This book took 8 years to write and was about 'the sacred feminine'.  It lost me!
  My daughter, Kathy, and I both read this book and laughed about the comparison of this mother/daughter trip to Greece and our trip to Newfoundland. Sue and her daughter were completely wrapped up in self-analysis and the angst of relationship.  
  This book seemed so serious, while we just enjoyed the country, sang and laughed as we drove across Newfoundland with my other daughters and granddaughter.



  Sue Monk Kidd was born in Georgia and received her B.S degree (nursing) from Texas Christian University.  She worked as a nurse and a nursing instructor.  She married Sanford (Sandy) who graduated in theology and they had 2 children.
  She began writing- mostly in guidepost magazine.  She wrote two spiritual memoirs, then took a turn into feminist theology.
This book chronicles her journey from Christian tradition to sacred Feminism.
  The author was strongly influenced by the teaching 'second in creation, first to sin'.  She recognized the wound that women carry when they feel inferior and secondary.  She needed to re-image Deity.  She discovered that before the Hebrew religion, people worshipped the Supreme Being in the form of a female Deity- the Great Goddess.  She found a new inner authority as a woman and a connection to the natural world.
  I didn't relate to this book, perhaps because I have never felt inferior or secondary because of being a  woman.

   Sue Monk Kidd is a very self-reflective woman who writes great fiction!

No comments:

Post a Comment