Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees,
14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South
Carolina 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
From Publishers Weekly
Honey-sweet but never cloying, this debut by nonfiction
author Kidd (The Dance of the Dissident Daughter) features a hive's worth of
appealing female characters, an offbeat plot and a lovely style. It's 1964,
the year of the Civil Rights Act, in Sylvan, S.C. Fourteen-year-old Lily is
on the lam with motherly servant Rosaleen, fleeing both Lily's abusive
father T. Ray and the police who battered Rosaleen for defending her new
right to vote. Lily is also fleeing memories, particularly her jumbled
recollection of how, as a frightened four-year-old, she accidentally shot
and killed her mother during a fight with T. Ray. Among her mother's
possessions, Lily finds a picture of a black Virgin Mary with "Tiburon,
S.C." on the back so, blindly, she and Rosaleen head there. It turns out
that the town is headquarters of Black Madonna Honey, produced by three
middle-aged black sisters, August, June and May Boatwright. The "Calendar
sisters" take in the fugitives, putting Lily to work in the honey house,
where for the first time in years she's happy. But August, clearly the queen
bee of the Boatwrights, keeps asking Lily searching questions. Faced with so
ideally maternal a figure as August, most girls would babble uncontrollably.
But Lily is a budding writer, desperate to connect yet fiercely protective
of her secret interior life. Kidd's success at capturing the moody
adolescent girl's voice makes her ambivalence comprehensible and charming.
And it's deeply satisfying when August teaches Lily to "find the mother in
(herself)" a soothing lesson that should charm female readers of all ages.
(Jan. 28)Forecast: Blurbs from an impressive lineup of women writers Anita
Shreve, Susan Isaacs, Ursula Hegi pitch this book straight at its intended
readership. It's hard to say whether confusion with the similarly titled Bee
Season will hurt or help sales, but a 10-city author tour should help
distinguish Kidd. Film rights have been optioned and foreign rights sold in
England and France.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From School Library
Journal
Adult/High School-Lily Owens, 14, is an emotionally
abused white girl living with her cold, uncaring father on a peach farm in
rural South Carolina. The memory of her mother, who was accidentally killed
in Lily's presence when she was four, haunts her constantly. She has one of
her mother's few possessions, a picture of a black Madonna with the words,
Tiburon, South Carolina, written on the back. Lily's companion during her
sad childhood has been Rosaleen, the black woman hired to care for her.
Rosaleen, in a euphoric mood after the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,
goes to town to register to vote and insults one of the town's most racist
residents. After she is beaten up and hospitalized, Lily decides to rescue
her and they go to Tiburon to search for memories of her mother. There they
are taken in by three black sisters who are beekeepers producing a line of
honey with the Black Madonna label. While racial tensions simmer around
them, the women help Lily accept her loss and learn the power of
forgiveness. There is a wonderful sense of the strength of female friendship
and love throughout the story.
Penny Stevens, Andover College, Portland, ME
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc
From Library Journal
This sweeping debut novel, excerpts of which have
appeared in Best American Short Stories, tells the tale of a 14-year-old
white girl named Lily Owen who is raised by the elderly African American
Rosaleen after the accidental death of Lily's mother. Following a racial
brawl in 1960s Tiburon, SC, Lily and Rosaleen find shelter in a distant town
with three black bee-keeping sisters. The sisters and their close-knit
community of women live within the confines of racial and gender bondage and
yet have an unmistakable strength and serenity associated with the worship
of a black Madonna and the healing power of honey. In a series of
unforgettable events, Lily discovers the truth about her mother's past and
the certainty that "the hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters."
The stunning metaphors and realistic characters are so poignant that they
will bring tears to your eyes. Public libraries should purchase multiple
copies. David A. Berone, Univ. of New Hampshire, Durham
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From
AudioFile
Fourteen-year-old Lily Owens tells her own story,
capturing our attention from the first moments of this outstanding audiobook.
As she explains, her mother is dead, her father hates her, and the popular
girls in school laugh at her. The only person who cares is Rosaleen, her
black caretaker. When Rosaleen is jailed for pouring snuff juice on the
shoes of three obnoxious white men--this is mid-1960s South Carolina--Lily
springs her from jail, and together they set off toward their ultimate
salvation with three black female honey farmers. The story is funny,
heartbreaking, and uplifting all at once. Jenna Lamia delivers a tour de
force narration. Her Lily is a particular feat--she sounds believably 14
without being irritatingly young or falsely squeaky. Rosaleen's slow, wry
drawl brings this wise character to life. And the men--from the helplessly
angry father to the oily preacher--are word perfect. A must listen. A.C.S.
Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine--
Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From
Booklist
Kidd's warm debut is set in the sixties, just after the
civil rights bill has been passed. Fourteen-year-old Lily Owens is haunted
by the accidental death of her mother 10 years earlier, which left her in
the care of her brutal, angry father but also Rosaleen, a strong, proud
black woman. After Rosaleen is thrown into jail for standing up to a trio of
racists, Lily helps her escape from the hospital where she is being kept,
and the two flee to Tiburon, a town Lily believes her mother had a
connection to. A clue among her mother's possessions leads Lily to the
Boatwright sisters, three black women who keep bees. They give Lily and
Rosaleen the haven they need, but Lily remains haunted by her mother's death
and her own involvement in it. Although she fears her father is looking for
her, Lily manages to find solace among the strong women who surround her
and, eventually, the truth about her mother that she has been seeking. An
uplifting story. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Richmond Times-Dispatch
...an Oprah pick just waiting to happen.
The Baltimore Sun
Inspiring. Sue Monk Kidd is a direct literary descendant
of Carson McCullers.
Book Description
"The bees came the summer of 1964, the summer I turned
fourteen and my life went spinning off into a whole new orbit, and I mean
whole new orbit. Looking back on it now, I want to say the bees were
sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to
the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed." So
begins the story of Lily Melissa Owens, a plucky girl, rich in humor despite
heart wrenching circumstances. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with
her harsh, unyielding father, her entire life has been shaped around one
devastating, though blurred, memory- the afternoon her mother was killed.
Four at the time, she remembers innocently picking up the gun. And, she has
her father's eyewitness account of the gun firing. People remind her it was
an accident, yet she's inhabited by a torturous guilt. Lily's only real
companion is Rosaleen, a tender, but fierce-hearted black woman who cooks,
cleans and acts as her "stand-in mother."
South Carolina in 1964 is a place and time of seething racial divides.
When violence explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and
beaten, Lily is desperate, not only to save Rosaleen, but to flee a life she
can no longer endure. Calling upon her colorful wits and uncommon daring,
she breaks Rosaleen out of jail and the two of them take off,
runaway-fugitives conjoined in an escape that quickly turns into Lily's
quest for the truth about her mother's life.
Following a trail left ten years earlier, Lily and Rosaleen end up in the
home of three bee-keeping sisters. No ordinary women, the sisters revere a
Black Madonna and tend a unique brand of female spirituality that reaches
back to the time of slavery. As Lily's life becomes deeply entwined with
theirs, she is irrevocably altered. In a mesmerizing world of bees and
honey, amid the strength and power of wise women, Lily journeys through
painful secrets and shattering betrayals, finding her way to the single
thing her heart longs for most.
From the Back Cover
"This is the story of a young girl's journey toward
healing, and of finding, at its end, not only wholeness, but the intrinsic
sacredness of living in the world. I think it is simply wonderful" (Anne
Rivers Siddons)
"Sue Monk Kidd's eccentric, inventive, and ultimately forgiving novel is
reminscent of the work of Reynolds Price in its ability to create a truly
original Southern voice." (Anita Shreve)
"I am amazed that this moving, original, and accomplished book is a first
novel. It is wonderfully written, powerful, poignant, and humorous, and
takes a line which is -- refreshingly -- strongly female without being
cliche-feminist. It is also deliciously eccentric, which lifts it out of the
usual category of a rite-of-passage novel into the realms of real
distinction. DO read it." (Joanna Trollope)
"What a splendid novel! It's wonderfully thoughtful and sensitive and
compulsively readable." (Susan Isaacs)
"The Secret Life of Bees is a novel of love and almost unbelievable
courage, the quest of one young girl in search of her mother and so much
more. Sue Monk Kidd takes on huge things, and by writing about what is
mysterious, even difficult, in life, illuminates what is beautiful. She
proves that a family can be found where you least expect it--maybe not under
your own roof, but in that magical place where you find love. The Secret
Life of Bees is a gift, filled with hope." (Luanne Rice, author of
Dream Country)
"Writing with the intimate voice of the memoirist and with the
Southerner's abiding sense of place, Sue Monk Kidd has written a forgiving
story for the motherless child in all of us." (Shelby Hearon)
"Sue Monk Kidd has written a wonderful novel about mothers and daughters
and the transcendent power of love, all the while masterfully illuminating
the feminine face of God." (Connie May Fowler)
"With imagination as lush and colorful as the American South, a clutch of
deliciously eccentric characters, and vivid prose, Sue Monk Kidd creates a
rich, maternal haven in a harsh world." (Christina Schwarz)
"Sue Monk Kidd is an extraordinary storyteller. In "The Secret Life of
Bees," she explores a young girl's search for the truth about her mother;
her courage to tear down racial barriers; and her joy as she claims her
place within a community of women. Beautifully written." (Ursula Hegi,
author of The Vision of Emma Blau)
About the Author
Sue Monk Kidd is the author of two widely acclaimed
non-fiction books, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and When
the Heart Waits. She has won a Poets and Writers Award for the story
that began this novel as well as a Katherine Anne Porter Award, and a Bread
Loaf Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared in several literary journals, and
two of her short stories, including an excerpt from The Secret Life of
Bees, were selected as notable stories in Best American Short Stories.
The Secret Life of Bees is her first novel.
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