THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES
By Sue Monk Kidd
Rarely will a book excite so many of your senses from off the page. You can taste the honey, feel the heat and smell the corruption.
Fourteen year old Lily has been raised by her father since the age of four and told that she was responsible for accidentally killing her mother. Plagued with guilt, yearning for forgiveness and mistreated by her father, her life is a mess.
In the sultry heat of the South Carolina summer of 1964, Lily and her black housemaid Rosaleen, run away from the abuse and mental torture of her father and encounter a summer of adventure, racism, love, religion, self discovery and ultimate fulfillment at the home of 3 bee keeping sisters.
Sue Monk Kidd draws constant analogies between the secret life of bees and the trials and tribulations of a 14 year old girl growing up in a loving but at times difficult environment. For example Monk Kidd describes the desperate situation of “a queenless bee colony… a pitiful and melancholy place where there may be a mournful wail or lament from within. Without intervention the colony will die. Introduce a new queen and the most extravagant change takes place…” Lily has a similar experience …a sad childhood rejuvenated by the introduction of her new mother who transforms Lily’s life.
Her adopted mother treats her with the same fastidious dedication and care that she bestows on her bees. The honey produced by the bees is sweet and restorative just like the love and affection given to Lily. For a while both exist in perfect harmony, in a perfect idyll, but equally, both the bees and Lily have their difficult times, their moments of pain and unexpected trauma.
The Secret Life of Bees is beautifully written with an uncanny understanding of the time, place, emotions and racial tensions that was South Carolina in the mid sixties. It is sad, funny, charming, uplifting, warm-hearted and highly recommended.
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