The Mermaid That Came Between Them

by Carol Ann Sima

As a young boy visiting the seaside, Jacob met his first love: a mermaid named Claritha. Three decades later, he’s a divorced father of a college-age son and a writer of maritime adventure stories, Jacob renews his fantastical relationship with Claritha only to discover that his son too has fallen in love with the same bedazzling creature from the sea. Despite her supernatural sexuality, Claritha, like any ordinary landlocked female, is experiencing menopause, and is pursuing a man to fertilize her one remaining egg. In response to this womanly rite of passage, and to help make sense of his intergeneration love triangle, Jacob pens a self-help book about men and menopause and unwittingly becomes a sought-after media sensation, though women’s groups question his credibility. Like the fantastic fabulism mastered by Alice Hoffman and Tom Robbins, Carol Ann Sima’s forcefully imaginative and ebullient novel walks readers through a sprightly urban fairy tale where anything—even a mermaid mén