Ann Kidd Taylor

“My children have always existed at the deepest center of me, right there in the heart/hearth, but I struggled with the powerful demands of motherhood, chafing sometimes at the way they pulled me away from my separate life, not knowing how to balance them with my unwieldy need for solitude and creative expression.”

This is a reflective memoir co-authored by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor. The book follows their journeys through Greece and France as they each navigate show more pivotal moments in their lives—Sue grappling with the transition into midlife and the empty-nest phase, and Ann seeking direction after college while struggling with self-doubt. As they explore these ancient lands, their personal reflections deepen, revealing the complexity of their mother-daughter relationship and their own individual quests for identity and purpose.

This book was not what I expected. For no clear reason, I assumed it was about a mom-daughter U.S. road trip, not an introspective journey through Greece and France. I liked how Greek mythology was a significant part of the storytelling; not being Christian, I couldn't relate at all with the large amount of content about Mary (mother of Jesus).

As a mother of an adult daughter whom I cherish, I was eager to dive into this book. We moms can always use all the help we can get as we navigate the sometimes-tricky terrain of relating to our daughters as they enter adulthood. This book invited me to reflect on my own relationship, and I was interested in the way Sue and Ann shared their different perspectives. The lesson of never taking anything personally was constantly running through my head.

Beyond the mother-daughter relationship, the book is a good one for empty-nester women who are looking to redefine their lives in a new chapter and for young women at the end of college who are struggling to launch themselves into the world.

While I found bits and pieces of the book helpful, the pacing was quite slow for me. It’s a very reflective narrative that moves at a gentle, sometimes sluggish, pace. At times, it felt like it dragged, and it wasn’t one of those books I was rushing to pick up again.

Any woman with a deep love of Greece or an appreciation for its mythology, history, and landscape will especially enjoy the book. show less

Sue is dealing with turning fifty, an aging body and a new realization of her mortality. Her daughter Ann, at twenty-two, has received a rejection letter for grad school that has her questioning her purpose in life and her own self-worth. Both are redefining their relationship, as Ann has become a young woman and Sue begins to interact with her not just as a daughter but as a fellow adult and friend.

Told in alternating chapters, Sue and Ann share their internal struggles and joys as they show more travel in Greece, Turkey, and more. Sue especially is in search for the divine feminine and what she calls the "Old Woman," a sort of dimension she believes needs to be added to her spirituality. Ann struggles with depression and has an ongoing search to become less of a wallflower. Together, they tell the story of their joint travels - the external becoming a metaphor for the internal. Both women are incredibly introspective, to me quite frustratingly so as I prefer the concrete to metaphors, and boy is this metaphor heavy (Greek myths, understandably, figure hugely). My library categorizes this book as Travel Essays, but this is rather a misnomer as it has less to do with where they go and what they see as it is what they felt and experienced. If you like that, great. But I generally found it very hard to connect, especially with Sue, though I did enjoy the portions that dealt with images that found their way into The Secret Life of Bees. Ann is closer to my age and I can somewhat remember working through my own "finding my purpose in life" time, though not thinking nearly so much or so deeply. show less

The Shark Club by Ann Kidd Taylor is a lovely beach read, “set against the intoxicating backdrop of palm trees, blood orange sunsets, and key lime pies.” The book is about Maeve, her twin brother, Robin and their childhood friend, Daniel.

Maeve is a traveling marine scientist, often called the shark whisperer, who returns to the small island off Florida’s coast where she grow up in her grandmother’s hotel. She was bitten by a shark at the age of twelve and has been obsessed with show more sharks ever since. She has just began a romance with her colleague Nicholas, who also shares her passion for the ocean and its creatures, but that relationship is threatened when she arrives home and discovers her past love, Daniel is also staying at the hotel.

As children, Maeve, Daniel, and Robin were very close. All three of them had lost parents. “They shared fatherlessness like a glue that connected them.” According to Maeve, her and her brother “had an empty place, but we’d tried to fill it in such different ways. For me, it was with sharks and oceans, with Daniel and the dream of a family. For Robin, it was writing. After Robin’s writing was rejected over and over and he walked away from it, he turned to other ways of filling the void- parties and drinking and a sort of aimlessness.” Robin’s grief never seemed to heal. Making trouble was his way of expressing his grief. When Maeve returns to her home, she discovers Robin has finally written a book, but she is shocked and hurt to discover the book is about her and Daniel.

Daniel and Maeve proclaimed their love to each other when they were just 12 years old. This love progressed into adulthood and when their wedding was abruptly called off Maeve was devastated and heartbroken. “I experienced his loss like an actual death. I went underwater in more ways than one.” He was a wound I carried that wouldn’t heal.” She later tells Daniel, ““There is always a sadness in me. I don’t want it to be there, but it is. It sleeps inside of me, and when it wakes there’s nothing I can do about it. It takes over, and when that happens nothing else exists. You did that. For the last seven years, I’ve hated you for it.”

So we have a love triangle. Will Maeve finally have a second chance at love with Nicholas or can she finally forgive Daniel and have everything she ever wanted. But the book isn’t just a romance, there is also a mystery intertwined. There is an illegal shark finning operation going on and sharks are being killed for their fins. Maeve is very upset by it and involved in trying to find the culprits. ”I’d given my life to sharks and people were killing them faster than they could reproduce.” “The sea, its creatures, its sharks-they were my religion. I could die for that.”

I adored this book. The perfect beach read. Written very well. It hooks you right away.

Interesting side note: the author’s mother is Sue Monk Kidd, who wrote the Secret Life of Bees.

A few more quotes:

“We all have to live with our mistakes.”

“I’d make a fortress of myself and it caved like one of the sand castles that dotted the beach.”

“Whatever makes you feel alive, you ought to pay attention to it. If it makes you happy, it’s worth following.” show less

A friend of mine read this book and loved it, passing it on to me. Wish I could say I liked it, but I did not. I read it quickly, first to get to the Paris part, and then to finish it to give back to my friend. I found both women, mother and author Sue Monk KIdd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor; totally self-absorbed. They were traveling the world, with other people, but seeing only their own interior lives. Both were in transition periods and that may have accounted for and excused some of show more their being totally wrapped up in themselves, but it made for terribly dull reading, and was a big disappointment to someone who had just come back from a trip to Paris with her daughters! Also, I got the distinct impression both women are quite introspective and their own emotional and spiritual temperatures are what is of the most compelling interest to them. Their feminism struck me as being more narrow than broadening or freeing. From their few comments about their husbands, both seem to be married to very fine men, but they both brush off their husbands and have next to no references to any masculine influence at all. I can't imagine a man enjoying this book, though I imagine some women who identify with the different stages of their lives and their relationship with each other, will, as my friend did. Another thing that really bothered me is that the writers construct their own spiritual "trinity" of Athena, Joan of Arc, and Mary, and pray to them. Sue and Ann consider themselves very spiritual, but I thought they seem to be separated from spiritual truth, and certainly from biblical truths. Their spirituality seems to be a self-construct of paganism and self actualization. Interestingly, Ann Kidd Taylor, the daughter, a neophyte, writes better, I thought, than her mother, the experienced author -- Ann's voice is more conversational and clearer, and she communicates better, but then Sue Monk KIdd's writing has always seemed somewhat labored and pretentious to me. show less