Laline Paull

Such a good novel. Really hallucinogenic. Set in a hive where the walls are frescoed with scent. Scent is a solid, veiling faces, blocking paths, imparting information and controlling minds. The bees are anthropomorphised just enough that you can understand what’s going on and care. The book is really about us.

The bees live in a monarchical theocracy. Paull has a lot to say on the subject. It put me in mind of a mix of Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid’s Tail (but with bees). She has show more a lot to say about human behaviour regardless of the political system, particularly about crime and sin and how we deal with it. From the descriptions I take it that the hive is infected with the Deformed Wing Virus. They take the symptoms to be a result of crime and perform scapegoating rituals to keep the blame contained. They take thelytokous parthenogenesis to be a sin and perform human (I mean bee) sacrifices to remove the sin from society. This raises a number of disturbing questions in my mind. Questions about human agency, questions about where blame lies and how it can be moved around, preferably away from us.

Unfortunately there’s no time to answers as the pace of this book is break-neck. I read 250 pages in a single sitting. show less

Well, there's been lots of buzz surrounding Laline Paull's debut novel, The Bees. (sorry, couldn't resist!) And that buzz is well-deserved!

Flora 717 is born a sanitation worker in her hive - the lowest of the low. But Flora 717 is an anomaly - she can speak. One of the Sage Priestesses take notice of her and Flora is moved to the nursery to feed the young. Then against all odds, she becomes a forager, flying outside of the hive to find pollen and nectar to feed her hive. She is brave and show more kind and tries to serve her queen and live by the hive's dictum -'Accept, Obey and Serve'. But Flora 717 has another ability, one that goes against everything she has been taught from the moment she was born. And it is this instinct that now changes not just Flora's life, but that of the Queen and her hive.

Now, you might be saying to yourself - really? Bees? Trust me - you'll quickly become immersed in the life of the hive and truly invested in the character of Flora 717. And as you read or listen, you get caught up in her hopes and aspirations, in the struggles of her and her kin and in the day to day life of the community and the hive's struggle to survive. For there are predators. Humans make a brief appearance in the first and last chapters, reminding us of the fragility of nature and the harm our chemicals wreak.

The details of the hive and of the lives of bees were both informative and fascinating. Did you know that "It takes twelve bees their entire lives to gather enough nectar to make one teaspoon of honey?"

The architectural structure of the hive was quite detailed and vividly drawn.

From the author: "I realized that the most astonishing creatures and events are happening everywhere - it’s just a question of scale whether we notice them or not." Paull's novel has definitely made me stop and take notice when I see bees busily buzzing in my flowerbeds, then flying away. Makes you wonder....

I chose to listen to The Bees. Orlagh Cassidy was the reader. She is a favourite narrator of mine, but I am very used to listening to her reading thriller and action books. I wondered how she would handle a distinctly different piece of work. The answer is - excellently. Cassidy's voice is unique, with lots of hidden gravel and nuance. She chose a voice for Flora that I both enjoyed and suited the mental image I had created of Flora. Cassidy interpreted the book very well, using tone, speed and inference to bring Paull's prose to life. There are some books I just know I have enjoyed more by listening, rather than reading them. The Bees is one of those.

The Bees has been aptly described as a combination Watership Down meets The Handmaid's Tale. show less

This book was quite a surprise! It was a novel about bees! It was life in the hive. Flora 717 was born into one of the lower castes of bees, a sanitation worker. It is her story throughout the book as she meets priestesses, drones, the Queen, the fertility police, and treacherous spiders. This is a world where only the Queen can breed, deformity means death, and the mantra inside the hive is accept, obey, and serve. I was unaware that this was originally written as a YA dystopian novel. I show more would certainly never describe it as YA or dystopian; I would classify it as as an adult sci/fantasy. This book was wildly imaginative. I would describe it as Animal Farm on steroids. I would think some of the parallels would be too complex for most young adults (teens). This is the ultimate world building novel. Had I known it was actually ABOUT bees, I probably would not have purchased the book, but I'm glad I did. It's refreshing to read outside ones genre comfort. 5 stars for creativity, 3 1/2 stars for readability. show less

It took me a while to succumb to the charms of this novel. I am a sucker for sentient-animal stories but the level of anthropomorphism Paull chose for The Bees took getting used to, maybe because it didn't always feel consistent.

On the one side of animal-centric stories you have animal protagonists who behave more or less like the animals they are, like Buck in Call of the Wild, a dog that more or less behaves like a dog. On the other side, you have The Wind in the Willows with Mole and Rat show more messing about it boats. The Bees falls into a messy between-space where sometimes the bees act like bees and at other times they act like the Borgias. It probably bothered me more than it should have--I started to think, hmm, why can the bees talk to other insects and to arachnids, but not to the mammals they come across? Why should spiders have the gift of foresight--isn't that cheating a little, a cheap way to give the novel scope it wouldn't have if the spiders weren't so magical?

By midpoint though my resistance was completely gone and I was thoroughly enjoying the story. I thought the end was so well done--BOTH endings, actually--the end to the main story about the bees, which ended very satisfyingly, and the coda-end, which is filled with delightful irony when the humans enter and demonstrate their unwavering mistaken belief that the world and all its wonders revolves around them. show less