Of Bees and Mist

"Few in town agreed on when the battle began. The matchmaker believed it started the morning after the wedding, when Eva took all of Meridia's gold and left her with thirteen meters of silk. The fortune-teller, backed by his crystal globe, swore that Eva's eyes did not turn pitiless until Meridia drenched them in goose blood three months later. The midwife championed another theory: The feud started the day Meridia held her newborn son with such pride that Eva felt the need to humble her. But no matter how loudly the townspeople debated, the answer remained a mystery — and the two women themselves were to blame. Meridia said little, and Eva offered conflicting explanations, which confirmed the town's suspicion that neither one of them show more could actually remember." (excerpted first lines of Erick Setiawan's novel Of Bees and Mist)

Catchy introductory paragraph, huh? I was immediately sucked in. Long-standing feuds, familial enmity, magical manifestations of guilt, anger and loss - these are the things that attract me to a story, and Mr. Setiawan writes with grace and fluidity, rife with imagery. So why the mediocre rating? Of Bees and Mist was not, overall, a pleasant experience. The tale told was dark and painful, riddled with unlikeable characters who struggle for, but never achieve, any sort of redemption. They are twisted (in some cases, literally so) by hate, feeding it on from generation to generation. Ultimately, the story was compelling, but depressing. show less

Meridia grows up in a house with ghosts in the mirrors, mysterious mists outside, and a staircase with strangely shifting dimensions. Also a cold, belittling father; a mother who often seems (possibly quite literally) to forget she exists; and vague, troubling memories of something very bad that happened when she was a baby. Eventually she grows up and gets away from that horrible place only to end up living with a mother-in-law who is a million times worse.

The fantasy elements here -- or maybe they're magic realism elements; I admit I've never been entirely clear on or cared all that much about the division between the two -- made this seem like it would be right up my alley. But while there were moments where those elements were show more interesting, mostly they just didn't do all that much for me. I get what the author is doing with them. There's a lot of taking the characters' personal issues and magically projecting them out into the world, so that marital infidelity might manifest as a descending mist, or the manipulative words of an abusive gaslighter take form as a swarm of bees. And that seems at least potentially interesting, but, I don't know, in the end it didn't necessarily feel like it added much to these characters' stories. And those stories themselves are just overwhelmingly awful, a constant cavalcade of oppressive, abusive nastiness. Which, again, could potentially be worth reading if I felt it was saying something really profound about abusive family dynamics or providing some moving emotional catharsis or something. I suppose I could see how some might find those things in it. But for me, mostly it was just... unpleasant. show less

I thought I'd like this more than I did based on reviews and synopses I'd read. As is often the case, I think my opinion was affected by having listened to the audio book rather than reading it myself. The narrator came off as a little arch, or insincere, which impression of course rubbed off on the characters, who perhaps didn't deserve it.

Some reviews used "magical realism" to describe this, but I'd call it fantasy. But it was interesting to contemplate how and why I felt it crossed the line. I think the setting, which was not any one identifiable time or place or culture, pushed it over the edge into fantasy. I may have liked it more had it stayed more firmly rooted in a realistic setting. Then its message about destructive family show more secrets and how they twist relationships over the generations might have struck closer to home. As it was, I kept thinking of the adage, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." The characters often struck me as incredibly obtuse about being deceived over and over again by the same person. show less

Like the Addams Family without the Addams family values.
It’s atmospheric and full of INTENSE family drama. There were characters I HATED (looking at you Eva) but I wanted to see how it played out.
I liked the magical elements even though the “rhyme and reason” of it wasn’t explained (akin to magical realism more than fantasy).
I did not like ANY of the romances. So toxic. Everyone in the book is messed up (except maybe Noah and poor Permony.)
Full of generational trauma, poor communication and some personal empowerment - can’t say I found it “enjoyable” but it was interesting in its own quietly seething way.

Watch reviews here: https://youtube.com/@starkissedstories

Meridia defies death as a newborn barely minutes old. This is how Of Bees and Mist begins. Such a near tragedy doesn't explain why her father is verbally and sometimes physically abusive, or how her mother can't seem to remember Meridia even exists. Ghosts in the mirror are misconstrued as fragments of leftover dreams. The color of the mist outside the family door matters: yellow, ivory, or blue. There was a time before the ghosts and mists, but no one can remember it. All Meridia wants to do is get away from her heartless and cruel family. At sixteen she gets that chance when she meets handsome and charming Daniel. Within a year they are married, but like all good fairytales, Meridia soon finds out she has traded in one horror show for show more another. This time, her evil step-monster mother performs all the torturing. Helped by an army of fantastical fireflies and bees, Eva manages to make Meridia's life a living hell even worse than when she lived with her parents. Eva acts as a modern day Iago, letting her vicious tongue as her deadliest weapon destroy those around her. No one is safe from her vile talk. Rumors and lies spew like poison. However, as Meridia matures she finds the strength and fortitude to fight back even if that means giving up everything she loves. Mother and daughter-in-law engage in an interesting dance of push and pull for supremacy in the household. There seems to be no end to the animosities. show less

Summary: Merida grew up in a house that was never warm, caught between a mother who frequently forgot she was there in the midst of vast tempramental rages, and a father who was harshly critical, and who was whisked away by a mysterious mist every night to the house of his mistress. When, as a teen, she meets Daniel, a charming young man who really sees her, she thinks she's escaping from her terrible home life... when in reality she's moving to one that's far worse. The young couple moves into Daniel's family's house, and Merida soon discovers her true position in a house that's ruled at the whim of Eva, Daniel's mother, who is a selfish, cunning, and manipulative women who will stop at nothing - not even dark charms and spells - to show more have things her own way.

Review: I frequently have a problem with magical realism: sometimes it works for me, but often it feels like a book just didn't want to commit to crossing the border into full-on fantasy and risk getting slapped with that pesky genre label. But while Of Bees and Mists is brimming over with magical realism elements - spells, fortune tellers, seemingly sentient mists, dark visions, mysterious illnesses and cures, etc. - these actually wound up being the elements I liked best about this book. Erick Setiawan certainly has a way with language, and the world he weaves is at once completely fantastical and yet recognizably mundane, so that you're never sure if his characters are moving through a world that's a few degrees off of ours, or if they do live in our world, with the bizarre elements of the story entirely a product of their skewed perceptions. This could have turned out very gimmicky, but it's surprisingly effective, and it was very easy to get lost in the tone and the rhythm of the story. It's easy to believe that Eva's very words could be weaving a spell over Merida, when Setiawan's words are so clearly weaving a spell over his readers.

However, while I was enamored of the style, I was somewhat less engaged by the story. The front cover calls it a "domestic drama" and the back cover calls it "an engrossing fable that chronicles three generations of women," so it was clearly shooting for literary family saga. However, what it read like to me was 400 pages of Eva being horrifically nasty to Merida, and Merida fighting back, followed by Eva finding a new way to be horrifically nasty to Merida and Merida finding a new way of striking back. This may have been more dramatic if I'd been at all emotionally attached to Merida, but I didn't particularly care for her, nor really for anyone else who put up with Eva's abuse. By the time the ending rolled around, I wasn't entirely sure what the point of the preceding pages had been (other than perhaps "Man, sometimes in-laws are just awful, huh?").

In summary, I felt like this book valued style over substance, which is not necessarily a bad thing... in moderation. Had it been a hundred and fifty pages shorter, I would have had no complaints. But while I enjoyed Setiawan's writing, and was enchanted by the world he built, I just wish he'd had more of a story to fill that world, instead of the same plot point over and over. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: If you like your fiction literary, your realism magical, and your in-laws made of pure nastiness and spite, then this is your book! The back cover includes blurbs from John Connolly and Keith Donohue, who I think are very appropriate choices... if you liked The Book of Lost Things and The Stolen Child, then Of Bees and Mist might be right up your alley as well. show less

Like the Addams Family without the Addams family values.
It’s atmospheric and full of INTENSE family drama. There were characters I HATED (looking at you Eva) but I wanted to see how it played out.
I liked the magical elements even though the “rhyme and reason” of it wasn’t explained (akin to magical realism more than fantasy).
I did not like ANY of the romances. So toxic. Everyone in the book is messed up (except maybe Noah and poor Permony.)
Full of generational trauma, poor communication and some personal empowerment - can’t say I found it “enjoyable” but it was interesting in its own quietly seething way.

Watch reviews here: https://youtube.com/@starkissedstories