The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey

As you can tell from this blog, I don't read many books that are recently published. The Mermaids Singing was published by Avon Books in 1998.  Most of the time-- 99% of the time-- I get my books from the library, and books that are very popular have a long waiting list; therefore, I wait for years to read them since there are so many books to read that don't have a waiting list.  This issue, I admit, has nothing to do with The Mermaids Singing, but for whatever reason I felt like saying this. A boring and insignificant detail for those who have read my Fiction Writing 101 posts.  Anyway...


The Mermaids Singing is filled with mother/daughter angst.  I gravitate to mother/daughter angst books even if I'm not intending to read one.  All that unconscious stuff going on,  I suppose-- like pulling a certain tarot card out of a deck over and over.  And while I was reading it I remembered a quote by T.S. Eliot that goes something like this:  "Human kind cannot bear very much reality." And while this novel deals very much with the reality of mother/daughter angst, it also presents the world of mermaids as imagined in the minds of the Irish.  The mermaid mythology is wonderful, and it helps deal with this reality that human kind has a difficult time bearing which explains why romance novels are so, so, so popular and which has nothing whatsoever to do with The Mermaids Singing.  (If you must know, I'm intrigued by the incredible popularity of romance novels.)

As I read about the generations of mothers and daughters who just don't get along, I not only thought of T.S. Eliot but of Dr. Christiane Northrup who says in her book Mother-Daughter Wisdom: Creating a Legacy of Physical and Emotional Health that "If you have a daughter, the work you do to make peace with your own mother and your nurturing history will be the best legacy for your health and healing you can pass on to her."  Northrup says a whole lot more (700 pages more) about this intense relationship, but that's the line I remembered.  Of course, if fictional mothers were this healthy, there wouldn't be many novels about mother/daughter angst, but The Singing Mermaids traces the history of the mother/daughter dysfunction through three generations, and it shows very well what Dr. Northrup argues in her mother/daughter book about the result of not healing things with mom before having your children. But by the end of The Mermaids Singing there's a hint that the next generation will be a bit healthier than the previous two which is a lovely way to conclude the novel.  It's not certain that this will be the case, of course, but there's room for the reader to imagine this.