The Secret Life of Bees
by Sue Kidd
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Book Summary Information
Author: Sue KiddEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2005-08-30
ISBN: 0143036408
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Secret Life of Bees
Book Review: Goes down easy, but it ain't exactly fluff
Summary: 5 Stars
After being decidedly unimpressed with the first Sue Monk Kidd book I read (The Mermaid Chair), I was afraid this one would be similarly the literary equivalent of a Lifetime movie. I was pleasantly surprised: while it has the same airy style that enables you to motor through the pages, it has substantially more weight.
The characters are engaging and believable (another reviewer questions why the protagonist doesn't act terribly mature, but she IS only a teenager after all!), and the plot includes historical and personal drama (African Americans gaining the right to vote and socially oppressed people's responses to racism).
This is also a rare novel in that while many would consider it to be in the genre of Beach Book, the women depicted are not superficial and do not seem like 2-dimensional "yay, girl power!" characters. They are strong, smart, conflicted women who are determined to make the world what they want it to be, whether questioning racism, letting newfound sexuality develop, or even creating a new religion.
Summary of The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love--a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler
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