Like Bees to Honey

Nina Robinson is leaving London to return to her home land of Malta. Last time she came was not a happy event, as her family rejected her, having previously disowned her for becoming pregnant with her son Christopher while at university in England. Christopher is accompanying her on the trip, while her husband Matt and daughter Molly stay in London.

Nina believes that Malta is where people go to heal - and she needs to heal for she is suffering from grief and heartbreak which threatens to totally overwhelm her. However, when she arrives in Malta she finds that it is crowded with the souls of the dead, who have come to find peace there. Able to see and communicate with the dead, Nina finds herself on a spiritual journey...will she find show more the peace and comfort she so desperately needs?

This is a beautifully written book. The style is truly unusual and hard to describe. It is told mainly from Nina's point of view, although there are smaller sections which are told from others who observe Nina. To say too much more would be to spoil it for anyone who has not read it.

Nina's grief was almost palpable. She has suffered a huge loss, which is made clear near to the beginning of the book; however, she is also grieving for the loss of family life, as she has been estranged from her family for so long.

The other characters were also interesting - especially Jesus, who features largely in this book. However, this is a Jesus like none you will have ever read about...he is a fan of reality tv and wears bright coloured toenail polish. If you are not religious, do not be put off by the fact that Jesus features in this book - it is not a story about religion.

Malta is practically another character in the story - vividly brought to life, reading this book made me want to visit there and explore. I can only assume that the author is either very familiar with the island, or has done some extensive research.

Ultimately this is a story about family, grief, home and redemption. Hard to review but easy to read and very very absorbing. Highly recommended, and I will certainly be looking out for other books by this author. show less

Set primarily in Malta, this novel makes full use of the sights, sounds, history and culture of that island to tell its story. I visited Malta about twenty years ago and it brought back a lot of happy memories. The author makes the case for Malta being a sort of congregation point for the recently dead, and the images of the spirit world that she creates are compelling.

There is a lot of sadness in the story – a cloud of tears was gathering on the horizon from an early stage – but it has its wacky side too, a world in which it’s possible to discuss 'Come Dine with Me' over a beer with Jesus (yes, that Jesus). Also fascinating was the séance, seen through the eyes of a spirit.

Language is important, and Maltese language interspersed show more with the text is translated immediately below, which I thought worked quite well, and if it was repetitive there was a deliberation about the repetition that was pleasantly quirky rather than annoying. Likewise, characters’ voices are clearly delineated with the main character Nina’s voice plodding and robotic, contrasting with that of bolshie ghost Tillie whose sections were full of humour. There is a lot of messing about with fonts and page layouts, and judging from the excerpts from the author’s other work at the end, this is a feature of all her writing. The only element of it I found irritating was the rendering of sounds, so that if a tap was dripping, it would appear as...

The tap dripped

~ dr-ip

~dr-ip

~dr-ip.

There must have been some purpose to it, but it made me feel as though I was at a parent and toddler group at story time, and the story reader was not going to carry on until every child in the circle had pretended to be a tap dripping. Oh well. I’m not greatly into gimmicky writing but given that I really enjoyed this book I’d love to think there was more to it than gimmickry. show less

I read it in a day, not because I was so engrossed, but because it was so lightweight. Like another reviewer said, it's really bothersome to see the way sounds are laid out on the page (drip, click, etc), especially with hyphens in them, which suggest the sound is prolonged. Might be true for dr-i-p, but I think of click(and flip flop bash cough clatters ...) as quick sounds. I ended up skipping my eyes over those words. I can't imagine what she thought she was trying to accomplish. Less bothersome was her repetition e.g my bones were cold, shiver, shiver, shiver, shiver. Those words were included within the text, not set apart, & I can actually imagine continual shivers. At the beginning of the book, I thought the translations (smaller show more font, in a separated line below the text) of Maltese words were helpful. About 1/4 way thru I thought it was irritating that the same frequently repeated word ("my heart") was still being translated, and that the same precise lengthy translation was given for other words ("Cisk lager was first available in Malta in 1928. It has an alcohol content of 4.2 per cent", "ta is a tag that seeks confirmation"). Again, they were skipped over, but irritatingly. It would have been more helpful to provide a glossary and let us decide for ourselves when we remember the word. Even more helpful would have been a pronunciation guide for Malti, but I'd think her purpose was not so much to teach us the language as some other esoteric design issue.

OK, so the design of the book was irritating. Was the content worth it? Maybe if you are a Catholic (or ex-Catholic) wallowing in guilt. I just couldn't relate. Six years after her son's death & she still can't get her act together? Maybe I'd believe this if it was 1 year later...at most 2 yr. All this Jesus posturing as a heavy beer drinker...I started thinking that she was the one doing all the drinking, (why she kept smelling stale alcohol). And by the end, when she gets her act together & is ready to go back to her husband & daughter, does she really think she can go back to that life? I'll bet her husband is about ready to ditch her, have an affair, anything to get rid of this flake who got pregnant when they were young & shouldered him with responsibility he wasn't ready for & the disaffection of his own family.
All right, I did like the image of Malta as a honeypot, & all the lost souls heading for it, for healing before they can move on to the next stage. I liked the sense of history she portrays in the dust, the buildings: "...each building breathes through history, space and time...blending into the story of invasion, of desire to control. The buildings are proud, they exist; they speak their own words into an island that carries the story of my family....Each building breathes out the same dust that forms my heart." Yeah, I get the life after death part, cycle continues, live life now to the fullest, blah blah. There are more inspiring tales telling this.
2011 review show less