Ann Kidd Taylor

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

Sue Monk Kidd ends this memoir with an apt quote from Anais Nin, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” [Traveling with Pomegranates] is a personal journey for both Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor. As they journey in Greece and France, each of these women is finding herself while simultaneously re-forging the mother and daughter relationship. Sue struggles to find creative energy in herself as she faces 50. Ann, depressed and withdrawn after show more being rejected from graduate school, searches for a direction in life.

The most interesting aspects of this memoir relate to Sue Monk Kidd’s novel [The Secret Life of Bees]. During her travels, Sue Monk Kidd develops a personal religion melded from a cult of Mary, classical mythology, and ancient goddesses which forms the basis of the unique Mary/goddess worship that takes place in the novel. The author also describes her struggles to shape the work and her intriguing use of a montage of seemingly random pictures as an “outline” for the novel.

Ann Kidd Taylor’s writing pales in comparison to her mother’s complex examination of the interrelationships of myth and life. show less

I was very disappointed in this book. It looks like a mother-daughter travel memoir, but really it's about depression and a mid-life crisis. I found it very difficult to relate to the mother's chagrin over being 50 and having a grown daughter. Partly that's because I'm in a different life stage, but Kidd wallows at such length that I had trouble mustering any empathy.

I related more to the daughter, but while depression is a topic I understand very well, I wish she had directed more of her show more attention outside of herself, at least in writing the memoir, even if she weren't able to while traveling. 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