The Secret Life of Bees
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Rating: ā 4/5
Date Read: 2014/03/10
Pages: 302
This little slip of a book was a surprise: it was not a novel about race, like I was expecting, but a bildungsroman about a young girl from South Carolina who has a lot of issues to work though. The voice of the young narrator, Lily Owens, was both poetic and realistic, which I liked. Also, the book really is about bees, which I loved.
Somehow, I donāt have much to say about this, perhaps because itās quite an internal story, or possibly because itās fairly simplistic. In a good way. It felt like a young adult novel more than anything else, which might be why I keep thinking āI liked this!ā without really being able to say what I liked. I wish I had read it in high school, but it turned out to be a quick little read over a few lazy days. Now that Iām thinking a bit more, I do like that it dealt with some potential āvery special episodeā material in a personal way that didnāt feel like pandering. It also evoked a sense of place: I felt like I could feel the heat and smell the Carolina jasmine, even though I mostly read this cooped up in my apartment during the tail-end of a Chicago winter.
The one thing I disliked about the book was the May character, who felt overly contrived. I always feel a bit manipulated when a writer
Anyway, I still liked this book overall. Yeah, it felt like an Oprah book (you know, because it was), but then again, sometimes thatās what youāre in the mood for.