Book Summary and Reviews of Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd

Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd

Traveling with Pomegranates

A Mother-Daughter Story

by Sue Monk Kidd

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  • Readers' Rating (2):
  • Published:
  • Sep 2009, 304 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

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.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Although the 'maiden-mother-crone' symbolism grows repetitive and forced, their's is a moving journey." - Publishers Weekly

"A touching rapprochement between mother and daughter, but much of the writing is murky and both narratives sound curiously alike - won't deter the many fans of Mom, however." - Library Journal

This information about Traveling with Pomegranates was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Martha Randall Black

Themes that touch us all
One theme after another struck a chord within me as I read this book - aging, creativity, spirituality, loss, motherhood...again and again a single, well-crafted thought brought tears to my eyes. While I identify primarily with the mid-life Sue, I clearly remember my younger self in Ann's chapters, and can see my own daughter in her as well. It was wonderful to have real issues and emotions presented so succinctly and yet so deeply.

Dagmar Rodriguez

It didn't get through me.
As a sixteen-year old I couldn't relate much with Sue, I tried to bring up my empathetic side to connect with her but it didn't fully work. However, I did relate to Ann's side of the book; just like her, I'm struggling to find my necessary fire and reading her own quest it's helping me find my way in life.

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Author Information

Sue Monk Kidd Author Biography

Sue Monk Kidd's debut novel, The Secret Life of Bees, spent more than one hundred weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold more than six million copies in the United States, was turned into both an award winning major motion picture and a musical, and has been translated into thirty six languages. Her second novel, The Mermaid Chair, was a number one New York Times bestseller and was adapted into a television movie. Her third novel, The Invention of Wings, an Oprah's Book Club 2.0 pick, was also a number one New York Times bestseller. Her latest novel, The Book of Longings, was both a New York Times bestseller and a number one IndieBound bestseller. She is the author of several acclaimed memoirs, including The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, her groundbreaking work on ...

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