Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story [Hardcover]

Sue Monk Kidd (Author), Ann Kidd Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 8, 2009

An introspective and beautiful dual memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist and her daughter

Sue Monk Kidd has touched millions of readers with her novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair and with her acclaimed nonfiction. In this intimate dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, offer distinct perspectives as a fifty-something and a twenty-something, each on a quest to redefine herself and to rediscover each other.

Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France. Sue, coming to grips with aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel. Ann, just graduated from college, heartbroken and benumbed by the classic question about what to do with her life, grapples with a painful depression. As this modern-day Demeter and Persephone chronicle the richly symbolic and personal meaning of an array of inspiring figures and sites, they also each give voice to that most protean of connections: the bond of mother and daughter.

A wise and involving book about feminine thresholds, spiritual growth, and renewal, Traveling with Pomegranates is both a revealing self-portrait by a beloved author and her daughter, a writer in the making, and a momentous story that will resonate with women everywhere.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In a probing literary collaboration that moves from Greece to their home in Charleston, S.C., novelist Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees) and her daughter, Taylor, explore and record the changing stages of a woman's life. At 50, Kidd, a wife and mother who had found fulfillment as a writer in recent years, was approaching menopause and anxious about tapping the green fuse, or regenerative energy, for the next step in her life. Traveling to Greece with her daughter, Taylor, 22, when the latter graduated from college in 1998, Kidd recognized that her daughter, who had just received a stinging rejection from a graduate school, was also undergoing another kind of wrenching transformation—from child to adult faced with decisions about what to do with her own life. In passages narrated in turn by Kidd and Taylor, the two create a gently affectionate filial dance around the other, in the manner of the fertility myth of Persephone and her mother, Demeter. In travels through Greece, Turkey and later France, Kidd and Taylor found strength and inspiration on their respective journeys in the lives of Athena, the Virgin Mary and Joan of Arc, but mostly through a new understanding and appreciation of each other. Although the maiden-mother-crone symbolism grows repetitive and forced, their's is a moving journey. (Sept.)
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About the Author

Sue Monk Kidd is a bestselling author and the recipient of numerous literary awards.

Ann Kidd Taylor is a graduate of Columbia College. She has written personal essays for Skirt! magazine in Charleston, South Carolina. This is her first book.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (September 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670021202
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021208
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #214,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold nearly six million copies, and was chosen as the 2004 BookSense Paperback Book of the Year and Good Morning America's "Read This!" Book Club pick. It was adapted into an award-winning movie in 2008. Her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, a #1 New York Times bestseller, won the 2005 Quill Book Award for Best General Fiction and was adapted into a television movie. Her novels have been published in more than thirty countries. She is also the author of several acclaimed memoirs and the recipient of many awards, including a Poets & Writers Award. She lives near Charleston, South Carolina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 124 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Loved "Secret Life of Bees" but couldn't plow through this, November 11, 2009

By 

DuxMom (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (Hardcover)

While I loved "The Secret Life of Bees" first as a novel and then even as a movie, and liked the Mermaid story that followed, this work of non-fiction combining a mother/daughter view is a major disappointment. Normally I like the "different chapter, different speaker" method of writing. Not so, here. The reason that I actually finished "Pomegranates" is that I did enjoy being filled in on some of the background of "Bees." Admittedly, some of the rest of the novel (Black Mary) is interesting from an historical perspective and the relationship of mother/daughter mildly interesting, I found that the two perspectives were self serving. As a woman about to turn 50 in a few months, I thought I would better relate to Sue and learn something meaningful of the changes brought about by menopause. Instead, I found myself bored by what seemed like an endless repetition of complaining and regret. And I have two almost 20 daughters... certainly there's something here that will give me some new insight...And then it dawned on me that Sue was actually helping daughter, Ann, to launch her career through this book! Ann's contribution was a travel dialogue that made me think, "You're kidding! You're that depressed right out of college,and you don't know you're divine purpose in life? How many of us realize that in our early 20's (or ever?) And then, "Eureka!" she wants to be a writer! And write about her travels to Greece? And do we need to know the details of planning a wedding? I was consumed by these details at Ann's age, too, but certainly don't want to read about anyone else's decisions.
I felt ripped off. An earlier opinion said this would be better as a blog. I agree totally. I'm just glad that I was able to get this from my local library and didn't buy it.

54 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful memoir on turningpoints and midlife, October 1, 2009

By 

C. G. La Ferle "Columnist and reader" (Midwest, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (Hardcover)

Like Sue Monk Kidd, I found myself at a crossroad when I turned 50 and my only child left home for college. Suddenly, I questioned my career direction and wondered where to turn next. But this isn't just a book for blocked writers. Kidd's new memoir speaks to the yearning in every woman who is entering menopause and struggling to redefine her motherhood, or searching for new projects to "birth." Having read all of Kidd's books, including her novels, I am grateful for this deeply personal glimpse into her creative doubts -- and her process.

Additionally, I traveled to the same places in Greece and Turkey, so the book also works as a compelling travel memoir. (In particular, I enjoyed the descriptions of Mary's last home in Turkey.) There's a lot more to this book -- just as there's a lot that goes on during menopause. While it's not a difficult read, this memoir is not exactly "light reading," and will hold most appeal to readers interested in feminist spirituality. I plan to read it again to appreciate its full depth. I'll read anything Sue Monk Kidd writes -- and was delighted to be introduced to the writing of her daughter as well. Highly recommended.

50 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Traveling with white gloves, November 15, 2009

By 

Katherine Cameron (Olympia WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Traveling with Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story (Hardcover)

This book provides some valuable information about Demeter, Persephone, and the Madonna (including fascinating information about the Black Madonna. ) I had hoped for an equally fascinating dialogue between mother and daughter, but instead I found it a little cloying and self-absorbed. These are women to the manor born, who seem to be able to spend big chunks of their lives traveling, being depressed, crying, lighting candles, writing, and seeing a therapist. To cap it off, the daughter decides to get married under an oak tree on a famous plantation in South Carolina. The gardens, she admits, were built by "100 slaves in 7 days." That's about as political as the book gets. I sense that these two southern women are searching for a black woman (or Madonna) as a rescue figure. This is a tale as old as our country...(See Gone with the Wind etc). Toward the end of the book, Sue (the mother) touches lightly on the world situation. She wants to give back, help out - but all she gives, in the end, is honey on the roots of a tree in Crete...The book is wrapped up in symbolism that seems superficial and dainty... like wearing white gloves to go feed the poor.