Okay, hear me out. This is SO not the kind of book I normally read. It's the kind of book my mother reads. You know the type I'm talking about: "Reviving Ophelia", "Not Without My Daughter"...mother-y books. It was, in fact, my mother who demanded I read this book, because she read it in her book club. DOUBLE red flag. That is when I normally drop the book and run as fast as possible away from her, screaming and flailing my arms. But when she gave me this book I happened to have a lot of time on my hands, so I determined to read it just to humor her, and braced myself for a sickeningly bittersweet learn-about-yourself Ya Ya Sisterhood fiasco.

And really, it kind of was. But in a cool way. And I liked it. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely chock-full of estrogen-soaked coming of age wisdom, complete with a veritable orgy scene of feminine self-discovery in which a roomful of goddess-worshipping gospel earth mothers smear honey onto a wooden likeness of the Virgin Mary.

Admit it, you're kind of interested. It's just good. Totally not for everyone, but it's good, and it's stayed with me all this time. It's kind of a period piece, too, and I guessed what I loved about it is that it's so not done. It really is pretty fresh and in my opnion, worthwhile.

The Secret Life of Bees is a fictional story set in 1964 South Carolina. Lily Owens lives with her abusive father, T.Ray, and she is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. One day, Lily finds herself in legal trouble after a racist encounter, and she goes on the run with Rosaleen. Will Lily find a place where she is loved and accepted? What will happen when her new host discovers the truth?

Each chapter starts off with some facts about bees. Did you know that in certain areas bees produce purple honey?

The Good

The beginning of this book is fascinating, and there are some laugh-out-loud moments. There are some elements of this book which are borderline fantasy, and that is really the fantasy that I love best, where something might actually be true. The bees added a certain depth to the story, and I enjoyed how they were woven into the fabric of The Secret Life of Bees.

This book has a lot of really strong female characters. They are hard-working women, and I really enjoy seeing pieces of literature where women are central figures, doing important work.

The Bad

The pacing is a bit too slow. For example, there are two big reveals that we know are coming. However, it took far too long to get there. There were too many times where Lily was going to reveal her secret and then changed her mind.

The reading technique that I used for this book is called immersion reading (listening to the audiobook while following along in a copy of the text). The narrator was Jenna Lamia. She did a great job; however, she also narrated a similar book entitled The Help, a book also about race relations in the 1960’s in the Southern United States. Personally, I enjoyed The Help more than The Secret Life of Bees.

2025 Reading Schedule
JantA Town Like Alice
FebtBirdsong
MartCaptain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
AprtWar and Peace
MaytThe Woman in White
JuntAtonement
JultThe Shadow of the Wind
AugtJude the Obscure
SeptUlysses
OcttVanity Fair
NovtA Fine Balance
DectGerminal

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Ahhh! *gasp* *choke* *stammer* I can barely find the words to say how much I loved this book. Honestly, The Secret Life of Bees has to be one of the best books I've read in a while. I just want to give it several A+'s and a kiss!

It was touching, well-written, beautiful, full of expression, insightful, anything you could want in a book and then some. It started off with a bang, that wasn't a bang... it grabbed you, but didn't startle you so much that the rest of the book was dull in comparison. There was romance, love, family, racial issues, religious experiences, and bees.

I have a feeling the title may deter a lot of people thinking that, oh, it's a book about bees! Well, there is a lot mentioned about bees, but it only helps enrich the story. With elements in the bees lives that tied in nicely with the lives of Lily Owens and the bee keeping sisters. All the characters are full and developed, except for the asshole racists in the very beginning of the book and somewhere in the middle, but even then real life racists aren't full and developed either. I'm sorry if you're a racist and you're reading this, but... well, fuck off. Mwa ha ha ha!

The only problem I had with this book was that I wished it was longer... but I think it was the perfect length. Nothing dragged out and nothing cut too short. Like little bears porridge, chair, and bed, it was perfect! I'm not surprised their making a movie out of it... I just hope that most people read the book before going to see it, because if they mess it up in the movie, that could deterr a lot of people from reading this wonderful book. And typically books are better than movies, because there's more and you have more freedom for thought. I also want them to cast me. *wink wink*

Sue Monk Kidd mentioned about possibly writing a sequel, possibly after she finishes writing her current work in progress The Mermaid Chair (which, if she continues writing like she did in this book, I will gobble up as soon as it comes out). I hope she doesn't write a sequel though, because The Secret Life of Bees can truely stand on it's own. And I'm sure as much as many people want to read more about Lily Owens and the Daughters of Mary, I think it will be hard for the second novel to live up to the expectations the first one made. This book may make it hard for Sue Monk Kidd... but if her writing continues to be as stellar as the writing in this book... she will have a fan base almost as big as J.K. Rowling. Potter-heads note the word almost.

I confess to being a little hesitant going into this book. It is, after all, that most cliched and irritating of literati faves: a coming-of-age story set in the American South. Lily, a motherless 14-year-old girl lives with her bigoted abusive father on a peach farm in South Carolina. Her goals involve befriending black people and finding information about her long-dead mother. Just summarizing this thing inspires the eye-rolling.

But the book does have some saving graces. First, the writing is incredible. Voice, pacing, transition, and word choice are all stellar. On a micro level, Ms Kidd is magnificent. For instance, despite the predictability of telling such a tale from the young girl's point of view, I thought the decision worked here. Lily herself is absolutely charming. She is completely honest with the reader, often to her own detriment. If the story had been written from anyone else's point of view, Lily would have been pathetic: abused motherless little girl who harbors way too much guilt and angst. This book could have gone off the deep end real easy. But Lily is a survivor and an optimist, and her naive faith drives this book.

Mostly. As you might expect in a story of this sort, there was plenty of menstruation angst, boyfriend nervousness, junior cheerleader tryouts, and the requisite abusive father. All of these things were painful to read. However, something that made this book somewhat fresh was the strong theme of race. For a nice chunk of the book, Lily is on the lam with her black housekeeper Rosaleen, traipsing through 1960s South Carolina after busting Rosaleen out of jail for offending some white guys. I was struck with the parallels to Mark Twain, only here the adventure was overlaid -- sometimes heavy handedly -- with a female sensibility. Nice. In fact, all of the embedded feminism was well done. Recurrent natural images of moonlight and water were beautiful and deliciously pagan. The author went to a lot of trouble to create a new religion just for girls: part Catholicism, part goddess-centered paganism, part ancestor worship. The religious aspect was interesting, but not as compelling as the author wanted it to be. I could tell she was trying to impress me with the notion of Mary as a goddess protector. But I didn't buy it. Lily bought it, though, and that was enough to keep me reading.

The whole book was a quest for independence, I think. To find confidence and drive within, without always needing that crutch of others' acceptance. The book almost achieved that. But it gave in at the last, to deliver a happy ending.

Now that I think about it, much of the book was cliche. But it was also a good read. The strength of the narrative voice saved it, and it had some absolutely gut-twisting parts. The line beginning "She was all I ever wanted" .... both painful and breathtaking.

3.5

Sue Monk Kidd - image from her FB pages

The Secret Life of Bees is a lovely tale. It tells of Lily, a South Carolina 14 year old. She lives, unhappily, with her crusty father T. Ray and Rosaleen, the woman who raised her after her mother died when Lily was 4. It is a coming of age tale set against the civil rights issues of the early 60’s. It is certainly no coincidence that Lily (as in white) spends most of the book in the company of earth-mother black people. Rosaleen attempts to register to vote and winds up in jail. Lily manages to spring her. Lily has always maintained fantasies about her dead mother, and wants to find out more about her. She uses clues found in materials left by her mother and winds up in another South Carolina town, in the home of the Calendar Sisters (August, June and May). There she learns about bee-keeping and mothering. There are mothering images aplenty here. The calendar sisters have evolved a personal religion around Mary, using a masthead image of the Virgin as an icon. Each chapter begins with a quote about bees. Each of these quotes tells of the substance of the following chapter. Lily learns the truth about her mother, becomes aware of her new sexuality, and grows up.


Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, and Alicia Keys as August, Rosaleen and June

There are flaws here as well as a richness of imagery. The good people (Rosalee and August in particular) are far too perfect, and we are expected to believe that Lily has no visceral hesitation or consciousness about the social implications about her attraction to Zach. It is a very goopy book. That said, I enjoyed it and got teary at the expected places. Overall, a pretty good read, recommended.


Sophie Okonedo as May and Dakota Fanning as Lily


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

A Teacher’s Guide to the book

A timeline of events in the story

Fourteen year old Lily was so tired of her father yelling at her, forcing punishment on her almost daily, accusing her of things she didn’t do – so when Rosaleen, her nanny since her mother’s death when she was just four years old, was arrested and beaten by white men – with the police looking on - Lily decided enough was enough. The racial prejudice in South Carolina in the 1960s was oppressive and cruel – Lily couldn’t work out why skin colour made such a difference.

With no plan other than to get away from her home town of Sylvan, Lily and Rosaleen headed in the general direction of Tiburon. The mystery surrounding the death of Lily’s mother, and the little bit she knew about her, pulled her in that direction. But where they would go from there was anyone’s guess.

Sanctuary was granted to Lily and Rosaleen when they found themselves at the garish, bright pink home of beekeeping sisters, May, June and August, whom Lily called the Calendar Ladies. As Lily worked with August and the bees, and Rosaleen in the kitchen with May, Lily found herself confused and lost. Would she ever find peace? She was a white girl living among coloured women – her heart felt soft with love toward these women, but the white population of the town didn’t understand. Would Lily ever find out what happened to her mother all those years ago?

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a beautifully written masterpiece in my humble opinion. I loved the writing; the descriptions; the humour sprinkled through the story. There was sadness and love, hope and forgiveness – but ultimately The Secret Life of Bees is the coming of age for a young girl who had more than enough tragedy in her life. I highly recommend this book; my second by this author…

It was a good book, but too sweet for my taste, just like the honey around which the story revolves. The plot and characters seemed to me very calm as for those tumultuous times of the civil rights movement. But I guess it's just another way of showing how people's lives were affected by those events. The author though chose a fascinating way of talking about racial issues: an unusual eye-opening experience of a white girl living in small black community. Here she's different and needs to prove herself to be treated as equal.
Overall good, but I couldn't attach to any of the characters...

A poignant story which takes the reader on a journey of growth and retribution. The main protagonist Lily is a likeable character who spends her life feeling responsible for the death of her mother, and this is a very painful read.
As the book progresses, it becomes much more, and the reader sees Lily blossom under the love of Rosaleen.
This was a great book and I will definitely read more by the author.

A coming-to-age novel set in South Carolina at the height of desegregation. Lily is a lovable pre-teen who'd grown up believing she killed her mother (accidentally) and is trying to escape a brutal, abusive father. Filled with a cast of eccentric characters, Lily runs away with Rosaleen, a black servant, and finds herself in a beekeeper's sanctuary, where secrets come spilling out of the closet for a cymbal-clashing ending. Although rendered very close to the voice of a believable pre-teen, the prose is riddled with cliches and mawkishness and characters who liked to stare off into the distance whenever a dramatic moment came to pass. Here's an example, "The music sheplayed was the kind that sawed through you, cutting into the secret chambers of your heart and setting the sadness free." The father was a cardboard one-dimensional ogre, with no redeeming feature whatsoever.

The most rewarding sections were the dialogues, and the characters of the Daughters of Mary as well as the beekeeper, August and her sisters (named after the summer months, June and May) as well as Lily's flirtation with the black young male helper, Zach Taylor. There were also great dramatic moments, when the stories surrounding desegregation rose to the fore (although the style tended to underdramatize these sections).

Honestly, it's hard to fathom how this book was nominated for the Orange Prize, and an excerpt was selected as a Best American Short Story, as well as becoming a phenomenal number one bestseller.

Tiene momentos pero, en general, es muy superficial y ñoña.

It always surprises me when friends suggest that I read this book. This is a horrible, empty, stereotypical book with no redeeming value I can see. To understand the painful cliche that this book is, you must research the trope of the "magical negro". In the trope, black people sacrifice themselves so that whites can be "saved" in any and every possible way: physical, emotional, economical, and even spiritual redemption are all possible. (In a religious sense, magical negroes function in books and film like a trip to India; they give white characters the opportunity for an eye-opening epiphany that changes the trajectory of their lives.)

Many of the films that win blacks Oscars or acclaim (Sidney Poitier in "Lilies of the Field", Will Smith in "The Legend of Bagger Vance" or "Seven Pounds", Hattie McDaniel in "Gone with the Wind") are classic examples of this trope in film. Magical Negroes--like Mammy in "Gone with the Wind"-- have no history or desires of their own and function only as exposition in service of someone else's storyline. (Rhett is a generous guy because he gives Mammy a red petticoat. Scarlet is a good person because she inspires such devotion in Mammy. But Mammy? Who is she really? The film never asks, never cares, and never looks back for Mammy. The story is about Scarlet.)

Magical negroes serve as set pieces and interchangeable parts in the fulfillment of the white characters' wishes, and they are very prevalent in books and films because whites write them--in a wish to diversify characters--without ever investing any real interest in them or in how their interests, history, or life have differentiated them for anyone else in the story. (Magical negroes are the "black best friends" of books and film: they show how cool the white character is because he/she has a "black best friend", without ever realizing that the sort of person who points to his or her "black best friend" as evidence that he or she has overcome is actually a schmuck, who is treating black people more like possessions than friends.) The hero/heroine of the story remains the white man or woman in whom the white author/screenwriter/director is really, fully invested. Once the white character's narrative arc is completed, the black character is discarded. And such a book or film can never teach me anything useful or true about a) black people's lives, or b) racial reconciliation, because c) no actual blacks were engaged in the making of the book or film, and d) the white characters are the only ones with any story, motivation, history, or ideas.

In the 2008 election, the trope of the magical negro was invoked--by some with derision, and by others with insight--regarding Barack Obama. (Rush Limbaugh loved to sing a song about a magical negro: that use was definitely sarcastic.) However, some--a very few--political commentators realized that some of the white electorate's passion for Obama grew out of a misplaced desire to see him as the magical negro set to "save" the US from its history of prejudice and racial hatred. And here is the real flaw in the trope: white characters in films and books rely upon black characters to do the work for them that they are unwilling to do for themselves. Barack Obama cannot save the US from its racist history; only recovering racists can do that, by doing the work of anti-racism until they are well and truly changed. (Sorry folks: the post-racial eschaton has not dawned as some had predicted and other had just hoped.) The trope of the magical negro is ultimately a canard because it is the lazy way out--the lazy way out of character development, just as it is the lazy way out with regard to governance and history. Blacks cannot save whites who will not save themselves. And, as his falling poll numbers indicate, Barack Obama is in danger of being discarded by disappointed followers in the same way that magical negroes are always discarded at the end of a book of film. It is not the sort of magic that works in real life.