4 ½ stars. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Weird, lately that’s what I’ve been doing and it’s working... All the hype brought me to it; the cover and title hooked me. A great story chock full of symbolism, I suppose it’s like an adult Aesop’s fable featuring bees.
Timeline early sixties, place racially-charged South Carolina, it’s an inspirational and decidedly feminist book with an interesting touch of spiritualism. The courageous story of a young girl’s escape from a bitter and abusive father, followed by her quest to find out anything she can about the mother that abandoned her. In the process she rescues her only friend, a feisty black woman also on the run. Its main theme is abuse and abandonment but it also tackles racism - more tastefully than most - by moving beyond stereo-types. The majority of the characters are multifaceted - virtuous and flawed - refreshingly human. All and all I’d highly recommend it. Indulge yourself and enjoy.

Footnote: Like all gardening fanatics, I’m a sucker for bees; loved their inclusion and had great fun with all the symbolism surrounding queen bees, hives and honey. A few favorites:

"Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved"
"It takes a bee 10 million trips to collect enough nectar to make 1 pound of honey"
“I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam”

Read it. Enjoyed it. Any day now I expect to be entirely swallowed up by my own home-grown vagina.

If you've read The Help, you don't need to read this. One contemporary coming of age book about a white southern girl amongst black women discovering life in 1960s is plenty.

Sue Monk Kidd's explosively popular (I'm going to go out on a very sturdy limb and guess that this was an Oprah book) The Secret Life of Bees is a perfectly enjoyable read that any mother would love. Oh the imagery, the ambiance, the estrogen! Halfway through I wanted nothing more than to curl up in my cardy on the couch with a cuppa herbal something-or-other and sip the sweet nectar of these succulent words. They flowed like honey: sweet, warm, and slow…

Oh so slow at times. There are only two or three moments in the 300+ pages that woke me from the pleasant droning (get it? the bees?) that entrances, captivating the reader's mind and attention. The soft ideas about religion, love and the mother-daughter bond hum against your ears, the buzz of thought never going beyond a distant whirring zzzzzzzz.

The Secret Life of Bees is a cliched soap opera, the sort of book that would provoke rave responses at book clubs composed of mostly bored housewifes. It's a pretty formulaic tale of a young, southern girl whose daddy abuses her, so she decides to run away with her black servant and find solace in an unlikely place.

The story is a reversal of Huck Finn's tale, which results in a schmaltzy schlock. The novel is full of stereotypes - 99% of the white male figures are abusive bastards, the girl's father is an ogre with no redeeming features. As if to get back at all males, all women in this novel are presented as inherently good. There are about 8 mother figures in this book. This may be the reason why the novel is so popular with so many sunday feminist that scour the depths of the internet.

As the novel was written by a white woman, there portrayal of black people is as patronizing as possible. In TSLOB, black people are not people - they are accesories for the white folk to find their way. The author doesn't use any sort of vernacular or vocabulary that would suggest that a black person is speaking (after all, we are talking about the 60's south). We see black people as black only because of their neverending good actions. There are of course the obligatory magical negro figures, the beekeping sisters our heroine reaches early in the novel - they have nothing else to do but sport sage-like advice about the world, bees and honey.

Do you by any chances wonder about the premise? After all, Lily escapes to find the truth about her mother whom she most propably killed, as she remembers holding a gun and a BANG! If you're reading the novel to find out, you might as well give up - Lily's mother is killed off like Bambi's mom to start the story, which turns out to be a patronizing tale about racism. Well, the Civil Rights Movement is an important theme in the novel, and Sue Monk Kidd certainly forces the reader to wish good for these poor black women. However, she makes a mistake of toning down the racist hate - in her world, a group of teenagers of opposite sexes and races driving around the town is never noticed; in real world they would be immediately violently separated, she sent off home and he at best badly beaten. A female black servant responds strongly to three antagonizing white males and even spits on their shoes - such herocism works good in movies, but most propably would have ended less than well for the woman.. All racism comes from the white, of course; there is no single black person opposing to the white girl living with three black women and being in a relationship with a young black man. It works both ways, something which Sue Monk Kidd seems to have forgotten; she fondly remembers Marthin Luther King, but is fast to forget about Malcolm X.

Everything here is washed down; there is absolutely zero ambiguity. Black-good, White-bad. Lily escapes from her own father to be accepted without question by the black women; and in the end she won't care much about her own mother because she found new mother figures, all black of course. And her black boyfriend goes to enroll into a white school. Was that even possible back then? According to the author it was.
The white priest kicks the girl out of church because she led in a black servant, but don't worry about the religious future of the precious infant - there is a Black Madonna, and her black daughters who are more than willing to allow Lily join their club. Gah!

I can see how this book will provoke lots of discussion about its "Interesting topic" (There are classroom questions in my copy!) but it's just shallow, empty and overrated to the max. The story has been done several times and to a much better result - think Harper Lee and Mark Twain.
Steer clear of the "modern classic" - the bee isn't buzzworthy.

4/5

Gražus, tik čiut naivokas reikalas. Daug religijos (ta prasme, DAUG), daug meilės, daug grožio, bet ir daug skausmo – tokio labai stipriai išjausto, kad ir pati posmą nublioviau, nes motinos meilė, ypač aptraukus akis, smegenis ir širdį depresijos debesims, tikrai gali būti labai skaudinantis, labai sudėtingas, labai liūdnas dalykas. Ir čia jis tikrai labai tiksliai, labai skaudinančiai perteiktas. Visa istorija šiaip gali iš pirmo žvilgsnio pasirodyti paprasta, bet daug joje visokių gražių posūkių, kurie tikrai iki tol nesutikti – ne kažkokie stebinantys naujumu, tiesiog kad tokie maloniai apgalvoti, tokie smulkmeniški, kad gražu ir tiek. Ir rašo autorė gražiai, tik kad knyga taip negrabiai, taip be meilės išversta – neabejoju, kad jei būtų skaitoma originalo kalba, tai tikrai atsiskleistų tas jos grožis, pietinių valstijų šnekta, gyvumas ir sodrumas.

Nors buvau mačiusi filmą (tiesa, labai, LABAI puikų – rekomenduoju visa širdimi), knygą irgi perskaičiau su malonumu. Tiesa, pirmoji jos dalis man pasirodė stipresnė, antroje jau šiek tiek daugiau paaugliškumo ir skystumo, o ir pabaiga tikriausiai daugeliui pasirodytų tokia suskubėta ir netikroviška, bet priėmiau „Paslaptingą bičių gyvenimą“ kaip YA knygą – man rodos, ji tikrai tokia. Ir šioje lentynoje ją padėjus, viskas gražiai sukrenta į vietas, o ir knyga veikia kaip koks apkabinimas ar šiltas kompresas – kol skaitai, tol jautiesi esantys tokiam glėby, saugiam ir minkštam. Aišku, apkabinusysis gali visko prikalbėti, kartais ir to, ką ne visada malonu girdėti, bet vis tiek fainas reikalas ir meilės daugiau, nei skausmo.

Knyga gražiai nugula šalia „The Help“, gal net „Nežudyk strazdo giesmininko“ – rasės ir rasizmo linija perteikta apgalvotai, skausmingai, bet ne banaliai. Šiuo atveju net labai grakščiai, nesudedant klišų akcentų ant sukeistų rasių vaidmenų, to neišaukštinant ir todėl nesugadinant. Tikriausiai šiaip rašyčiau 3*, bet už tą gerą nužliumbimą ir už tai, kad tiesiog knygas reikia skaityti savo laiku, kad jos kaltų stipriausiai, tai 4* ir prisiminsiu ją su meile.

How do you reconcile loss when your mother dies and you are only 14 and left to live with your abusive father?

In this case, young Lily decides to run away with her nanny Rosaleen to find out the truth about her mother's death.

The story focuses on loss, betrayal, racism during the 1960's south, as well as love - and the vulnerability experienced on this journey.

The story feels raw and poignant, showing the best and worst of humanity.

A page turner and on the whole a good read. The plot is set in South Carolina c 1964, post J.F.K., under the presidency of Johnson, the days of Martin Luther King and at the time that Malcolm X was gathering steam. Some of its themes are therefore predictable: race/racism and segregation. Further important themes include abusive relationships, and bee keeping of course. Mental illness and its positive management within a loving black community is also present. Early feminism within the black community with the Black Madonna as its emblem, is another important characteristic.

Lily is the book’s central character and its narrator. She is white. Her mother is tragically killed when Lily is 4 years old. Lily has a hand in this, unintentionally, and grows up trying to come to terms with it. Her father, also white, is abusive and clearly has his own problems. There’s much to admire in Lily’s survival instincts for herself and others but I found it hard to like her, however much I tried to make excuses for her. She runs away from home with her black “nanny” and they are taken in by three black sisters, one of whom keeps bees.

I enjoyed reading this but its credibility was stretched for me. There were some fine characterisations but characters were generally either good or bad, with little in between.

Generally, black = good; white = bad. White men appear as an abomination on the face of the earth. I suspect things were not quite as simple as that in 1964. I hope not, at any rate.



3*

"Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved."

I do love this book.
What starts off as a quiet story about a young girl in South Carolina, turns into a strong tale of race, prejudice, and finding love in the most unexpected places.
Lily Owens' mother died when she was 4 from an accident with a gun and Lily has always felt responsible. Her mothers death left her in the care of her abusive father who she calls T-ray and their housekeeper Rosaleen - Lily's only friend.
When racial tension explodes in their local town and Rosaleen is arrested, she and Lily run away, to Tiburon, SC - a place name Lily found on one of her mothers possessions.
Here they find the home of the three Boatwright sisters - August, June and May. They run a beekeeping business and take on the two runaways.
From here comes a tale of discovery, healing and forgiveness - all with the undercurrent of the discrimination and racism that fueled the Southern states in the 1950s. Highly recommended.

I'm picking this up again out of desperation. it's pretty bad. the pacing is terrible, the characterization is spotty, cliched, and rarely believeable, and there is so much shlocky dime-store 'wisdom' stuffed into the pages that it's a wonder anything ever actually happens, plot-wise. writing from the point of view of a child or adolescent is hard, and authors rarely get it right. this book certainly doesn't.

oh god, and the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter are so hit-you-over-the-head-obvious and at the same time so lacking in poetry that I dread the title pages of each chapter. oh my god, really, you're comparing the queen bee to Mary? and linking it to the motherless child at the heart of the story? holy shit, how subtle and original.

all that being said, the fact that the story revolves around strong, independent female characters is its saving grace. when the older women tells the child that she loved a man once, but loved her freedom more - well, that was the best line in the book. it's still cliche, but I'd rather read crappy cliches about strong women than crappy cliches about, I don't know, women shopping for shoes and whining about men. or crappy cliches about men who are the center of the universe and women who simply revolve around them, washing their clothes and exclaiming over the size of their dicks.

Disappointing, annoying, boring.....
Don't waste your time.

Where to begin, where to begin...

There are books that tell stories and then there are books that have an extraordinary storyteller. Sue Monk Kidd is one such author. I have now read this book a second time and seen the movie probably more than a dozen times. It's one of those stories that makes you sit back and just enjoy everything about reading a book.

The story is about finding love among a place where life is dark and broken. The secrets of such love is shown through the life of bees and the metaphors used based on what the main character Lily is going through is nothing short of absolute brilliance. The Boatwright sisters live in a southern pink house secluded from the world where Lily finds refuge. There she learns about her past and all forms of love; mainly a Mother's love. I just can't say enough how much I LOVE this book!!!

It is to be cherished and read over and over again.

Excellent read andI really enjoyed everyone of the characters.

“Every little thing wants to be loved.”

Not sure what to say about this book. I enjoyed reading it, but I never had a desire to pick it up.
I read it. It was fine. I won’t read it again.
A big issue with “The Secret Life of Bees” is that it is emotionally manipulative. I do not mind that, but be good at manipulating me. This novel is excessively obvious about it.
However, the text has moments of nice insight and thought. Some examples:

“The problem is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it.”
“People, in general, would rather die than forgive.”
“Regrets don’t help anything, you know that.”

And here is where my frustration lies. Nuggets like these are scattered around the text, but I don’t feel this book gives them serious attention and development thru the characters. The ideas of mothers, motherhood and feminine love and friendship are explored, but at a very surface level. There is no depth. This is made painfully obvious by the ending of the text, which is pure melodrama.
“The Secret Life of Bees” suffers from the recurring issue of shallow investigations of what makes us human. The potential was there.
Goodness, this book could have been great. Instead, it settled for decent.