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Loading... The Secret Life of Beesby Sue Monk Kidd
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  AmyElizabeth | Nov 4, 2009 |  It's hard to describe this book without going into a lot of detail. It's more or less about Lily, a teenager living in 1960s South Carolina, and her dealings with race, prejudice, and the death of her mother. It's a sweet and gentle story of acceptance and forgiveness. A touch predictable, but not exasperatingly so. All in all it's just a nice little tale. (  ) melydia | Oct 28, 2009 | I actually wasn't interested in this book until seeing a preview for the movie. It's a great look at Southern society in 1964, as well as an examination of the life of a motherless child. It could have been a great deal longer - there were several relationships I was still curious about at the end of the book - but I was still happy to have been talked into reading it after all. ( ) ascgrrl | Oct 21, 2009 | Rather twee.  mulliner | Oct 17, 2009 | Wow! I was blown away by this book. The writing was absolutely beautiful. I had to reread some of the lines and just let them sink in and cherish them for a while. I want to see the movie but fear that, as usually happens with movies, it will pale in comparison to the book. What a wonderful writer. I want more. (  ) lorimarie | Oct 14, 2009 | 
 Lily is a wonderfully petulant and self-absorbed adolescent, and Kidd deftly portrays her sense of injustice as it expands to accommodate broader social evils. At the same time, the political aspects of Lily's growth never threaten to overwhelm the personal.
Amazon.com (ISBN 0142001740, Paperback)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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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This was a book I was hesitant about reading. I don't know why, but anything that gets popular too fast is a turn off for me, but if I ever do come around to it, I end up loving it with everyone else (take Twilight, for instance). This book was no exception. My mom lent me her copy with her firm suggestion of reading it, and it didn't take me long to start, and then even less time to realize I couldn't put it down.
This is the story of Lily Owens, a Southern girl living with the guilt of her mother's death and the harshness of her unloving father during America's turbulent 60s. While trying to find her own path (and running from the law) she stumbles upon three black, beekeeping sisters, who teach her more than she bargained for.
Kidd does a wonderful job with the writing. Before each chapter she has an excerpt from different books giving details about bees and their culture, each a tiny glimpse into what awaits in the following chapter. The voice is spot-on and Lily's character is smart, lovable, and completely real. The sisters she meets are exactly who they should be; no other set of characters could have done a better job of guiding Lily to her ultimate realizations.
I loved this book, and therefore I give it 5 out of 5 stars, and I would definitely read it again (which is the biggest complement I can give a book). If you're looking for a good book to just pick up and get lost in, this is it. (