The Secret Life of Bees

Kerry

Rating: really liked it
Okay, hear me out. This is SO not the kind of book I normally read. It's the kind of book my mother reads. You know the type I'm talking about: "Reviving Ophelia", "Not Without My Daughter"...mother-y books. It was, in fact, my mother who demanded I read this book, because she read it in her book club. DOUBLE red flag. That is when I normally drop the book and run as fast as possible away from her, screaming and flailing my arms. But when she gave me this book I happened to have a lot of time on my hands, so I determined to read it just to humor her, and braced myself for a sickeningly bittersweet learn-about-yourself Ya Ya Sisterhood fiasco.

And really, it kind of was. But in a cool way. And I liked it. Don't get me wrong, it is definitely chock-full of estrogen-soaked coming of age wisdom, complete with a veritable orgy scene of feminine self-discovery in which a roomful of goddess-worshipping gospel earth mothers smear honey onto a wooden likeness of the Virgin Mary.

Admit it, you're kind of interested. It's just good. Totally not for everyone, but it's good, and it's stayed with me all this time. It's kind of a period piece, too, and I guessed what I loved about it is that it's so not done. It really is pretty fresh and in my opnion, worthwhile.

Sammy

Rating: really liked it
Ahhh! *gasp* *choke* *stammer* I can barely find the words to say how much I loved this book. Honestly, The Secret Life of Bees has to be one of the best books I've read in a while. I just want to give it several A+'s and a kiss!

It was touching, well-written, beautiful, full of expression, insightful, anything you could want in a book and then some. It started off with a bang, that wasn't a bang... it grabbed you, but didn't startle you so much that the rest of the book was dull in comparison. There was romance, love, family, racial issues, religious experiences, and bees.

I have a feeling the title may deter a lot of people thinking that, oh, it's a book about bees! Well, there is a lot mentioned about bees, but it only helps enrich the story. With elements in the bees lives that tied in nicely with the lives of Lily Owens and the bee keeping sisters. All the characters are full and developed, except for the asshole racists in the very beginning of the book and somewhere in the middle, but even then real life racists aren't full and developed either. I'm sorry if you're a racist and you're reading this, but... well, fuck off. Mwa ha ha ha!

The only problem I had with this book was that I wished it was longer... but I think it was the perfect length. Nothing dragged out and nothing cut too short. Like little bears porridge, chair, and bed, it was perfect! I'm not surprised their making a movie out of it... I just hope that most people read the book before going to see it, because if they mess it up in the movie, that could deterr a lot of people from reading this wonderful book. And typically books are better than movies, because there's more and you have more freedom for thought. I also want them to cast me. *wink wink*

Sue Monk Kidd mentioned about possibly writing a sequel, possibly after she finishes writing her current work in progress The Mermaid Chair (which, if she continues writing like she did in this book, I will gobble up as soon as it comes out). I hope she doesn't write a sequel though, because The Secret Life of Bees can truely stand on it's own. And I'm sure as much as many people want to read more about Lily Owens and the Daughters of Mary, I think it will be hard for the second novel to live up to the expectations the first one made. This book may make it hard for Sue Monk Kidd... but if her writing continues to be as stellar as the writing in this book... she will have a fan base almost as big as J.K. Rowling. Potter-heads note the word almost.

Will Byrnes

Rating: really liked it

Sue Monk Kidd - image from her FB pages

The Secret Life of Bees is a lovely tale. It tells of Lily, a South Carolina 14 year old. She lives, unhappily, with her crusty father T. Ray and Rosaleen, the woman who raised her after her mother died when Lily was 4. It is a coming of age tale set against the civil rights issues of the early 60’s. It is certainly no coincidence that Lily (as in white) spends most of the book in the company of earth-mother black people. Rosaleen attempts to register to vote and winds up in jail. Lily manages to spring her. Lily has always maintained fantasies about her dead mother, and wants to find out more about her. She uses clues found in materials left by her mother and winds up in another South Carolina town, in the home of the Calendar Sisters (August, June and May). There she learns about bee-keeping and mothering. There are mothering images aplenty here. The calendar sisters have evolved a personal religion around Mary, using a masthead image of the Virgin as an icon. Each chapter begins with a quote about bees. Each of these quotes tells of the substance of the following chapter. Lily learns the truth about her mother, becomes aware of her new sexuality, and grows up.


Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, and Alicia Keys as August, Rosaleen and June

There are flaws here as well as a richness of imagery. The good people (Rosalee and August in particular) are far too perfect, and we are expected to believe that Lily has no visceral hesitation or consciousness about the social implications about her attraction to Zach. It is a very goopy book. That said, I enjoyed it and got teary at the expected places. Overall, a pretty good read, recommended.


Sophie Okonedo as May and Dakota Fanning as Lily


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages

A Teacher’s Guide to the book

A timeline of events in the story

Lisa of Troy

Rating: really liked it
The Secret Life of Bees is a fictional story set in 1964 South Carolina. Lily Owens lives with her abusive father, T.Ray, and she is haunted by the mysterious circumstances surrounding her mother’s death. One day, Lily finds herself in legal trouble after a racist encounter, and she goes on the run with Rosaleen. Will Lily find a place where she is loved and accepted? What will happen when her new host discovers the truth?

Each chapter starts off with some facts about bees. Did you know that in certain areas bees produce purple honey?

The Good

The beginning of this book is fascinating, and there are some laugh-out-loud moments. There are some elements of this book which are borderline fantasy, and that is really the fantasy that I love best, where something might actually be true. The bees added a certain depth to the story, and I enjoyed how they were woven into the fabric of The Secret Life of Bees.

This book has a lot of really strong female characters. They are hard-working women, and I really enjoy seeing pieces of literature where women are central figures, doing important work.

The Bad

The pacing is a bit too slow. For example, there are two big reveals that we know are coming. However, it took far too long to get there. There were too many times where Lily was going to reveal her secret and then changed her mind.

The reading technique that I used for this book is called immersion reading (listening to the audiobook while following along in a copy of the text). The narrator was Jenna Lamia. She did a great job; however, she also narrated a similar book entitled The Help, a book also about race relations in the 1960’s in the Southern United States. Personally, I enjoyed The Help more than The Secret Life of Bees.

2022 Reading Schedule
Jan Animal Farm
Feb Lord of the Flies
Mar The Da Vinci Code
Apr Of Mice and Men
May Memoirs of a Geisha
Jun Little Women
Jul The Lovely Bones
Aug Charlotte's Web
Sep Life of Pi
Oct Dracula
Nov Gone with the Wind
Dec The Secret Garden

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Dolly

Rating: really liked it
I confess to being a little hesitant going into this book. It is, after all, that most cliched and irritating of literati faves: a coming-of-age story set in the American South. Lily, a motherless 14-year-old girl lives with her bigoted abusive father on a peach farm in South Carolina. Her goals involve befriending black people and finding information about her long-dead mother. Just summarizing this thing inspires the eye-rolling.

But the book does have some saving graces. First, the writing is incredible. Voice, pacing, transition, and word choice are all stellar. On a micro level, Ms Kidd is magnificent. For instance, despite the predictability of telling such a tale from the young girl's point of view, I thought the decision worked here. Lily herself is absolutely charming. She is completely honest with the reader, often to her own detriment. If the story had been written from anyone else's point of view, Lily would have been pathetic: abused motherless little girl who harbors way too much guilt and angst. This book could have gone off the deep end real easy. But Lily is a survivor and an optimist, and her naive faith drives this book.

Mostly. As you might expect in a story of this sort, there was plenty of menstruation angst, boyfriend nervousness, junior cheerleader tryouts, and the requisite abusive father. All of these things were painful to read. However, something that made this book somewhat fresh was the strong theme of race. For a nice chunk of the book, Lily is on the lam with her black housekeeper Rosaleen, traipsing through 1960s South Carolina after busting Rosaleen out of jail for offending some white guys. I was struck with the parallels to Mark Twain, only here the adventure was overlaid -- sometimes heavy handedly -- with a female sensibility. Nice. In fact, all of the embedded feminism was well done. Recurrent natural images of moonlight and water were beautiful and deliciously pagan. The author went to a lot of trouble to create a new religion just for girls: part Catholicism, part goddess-centered paganism, part ancestor worship. The religious aspect was interesting, but not as compelling as the author wanted it to be. I could tell she was trying to impress me with the notion of Mary as a goddess protector. But I didn't buy it. Lily bought it, though, and that was enough to keep me reading.

The whole book was a quest for independence, I think. To find confidence and drive within, without always needing that crutch of others' acceptance. The book almost achieved that. But it gave in at the last, to deliver a happy ending.

Now that I think about it, much of the book was cliche. But it was also a good read. The strength of the narrative voice saved it, and it had some absolutely gut-twisting parts. The line beginning "She was all I ever wanted" .... both painful and breathtaking.

Ahmad Sharabiani

Rating: really liked it
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

The Secret Life of Bees is a book by author Sue Monk Kidd. Published: November 8th 2001.

The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of a 14-year-old white girl, Lily Melissa Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed.

She lives in a house with her abusive father, whom she refers to as T. Ray. They have a no-nonsense maid, Rosaleen, who acts as a surrogate mother for Lily.

The book opens with Lily's discovery of bees in her bedroom. Then, after Rosaleen is arrested for pouring her bottle of "snuff juice" on three white men, Lily breaks her out of the hospital and they decide to leave town.

They begin hitch-hiking toward Tiburon, SC, a place written on the back of an image of the Virgin Mary as a black woman, which Deborah, her mother, had owned.

They spend a night in the woods with little food and little hope before reaching Tiburon. There, they buy lunch at a general store, and Lily recognizes a picture of the same "Black Mary" but on the side of a jar of honey.

They receive directions to the origin of that honey, the Boatwright residence. They are introduced to the Boatwright sisters, the makers of the honey: August, May, and June, who are all black. Lily makes up a story about being an orphan. Lily and Rosaleen are invited to stay with the sisters. ...

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «زندگی اسرارآمیز زنبورها»؛ «زندگی اسرارآمیز»؛ «زندگی پنهان زنبورها»؛ نویسنده: سو مانک کید؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 2005میلادی

عنوان: زندگی اسرارآمیز زنبورها؛ نویسنده: سو مانک کید؛ مترجم: شقایق قندهاری؛ تهران، علم، 1383؛ در 430ص؛ شابک 9644053958؛ داستانهای نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م

عنوان: زندگی اسرارآمیز زنبورها؛ نویسنده: سو مانک کید؛ مترجم: صدیقه ابراهیمی (فخار)؛ تهران، البرز، 1384؛ در 376ص؛ شابک9644424506؛

عنوان: زندگی اسرارآمیز؛ نویسنده: سو مانک کید؛ مترجم: گیتا گرکانی؛ تهران، کاروان، 1385؛ در 379ص؛ شابک9648497346؛

عنوان: زندگی اسرارآمیز؛ نویسنده: سو مانک کید؛ مترجم: عباس زارعی؛ تهران، آموت، 1393؛ در 379ص؛ شابک9786006605579؛

داستان «لی‌لی» دختری چهارده ساله است؛ دختری که همراه با پدر و دایه‌ ی خویش، در یک مزرعه‌ ی هلو، خارج از ناحیه‌ ی «سیلوان» زندگی می‌کند؛ او در چهار سالگی، مادرش خویش را از دست داده، و خود را مقصر مرگ مادر می‌داند؛ و در عین حال با پدرش نیز رابطه‌ ی خوبی ندارد؛ «لی‌لی» به زنبورها، علاقه‌ ی ویژه ای نشان می‌دهد؛ او دختر ساده‌ ای است، که شخصیتی افسرده دارد، و هماره احساس می‌کند، که دیگران او را دوست ندارند؛ «لی‌لی» به همراه دایه‌ اش به شهر می‌رود، و از خانه می‌گریزد؛ و ...؛ متن این کتاب در مدارس، دبیرستان‌ها و دانشکده‌های «آمریکایی» در قالب درس ادبیات تدریس می‌شود

نقل از متن: (بال‌های آن‌ها را می‌دیدم که مثل تکه‌های کروم در تاریکی می‌درخشیدند؛ در سینه‌ام اشتیاق ناشی از حضور آن‌ها را حس می‌کردم؛ نوع پرواز آن‌ها که برای یافتن گُل نبود، و فقط می‌خواستند باد ناشی از بال زدنشان را حس کنند، قلبم را می‌شکافت؛ در طول روز صدای آن‌ها را می‌شنیدم که در دیوارهای اتاقم تونل می‌زدند: صدایی شبیه به پارازیت رادیویی که از اتاق بغلی می‌آمد، و آن‌ها را مجسم می‌کردم، که دارند دیوارها را تبدیل به شانه‌های عسل می‌کنند، و از آنجا عسل تراوش می‌کند، تا من آن را بچشم؛ سر و کله ی زنبورها از تابستان 1964میلادی پیدا شد، تابستانی که من چهارده ساله شدم و مسیر زندگی‌ام کاملاً تغییر کرد، منظورم این است که مسیر زندگی‌ام واقعا و به طور کامل تغییر کرد، حالا که به گذشته نگاه می‌کنم، باید بگویم که زنبورها را برای من فرستاده بودند؛ می‌خواهم بگویم آن‌ها همان طور که جبرئیل، فرشته الهی، بر مریم پاکدامن نازل شد، بر من آشکار شدند و وقایع چنان رقم خورد که اصلاً انتظار نداشتم؛ می‌دانم که نباید زندگی کوچکم را با او مقایسه کنم؛ اما باور دارم که این مسئله برای او اهمیت چندانی ندارد؛ بعدا دلیلش را خواهم گفت؛ فعلاً همین قدر بگویم که با وجود تمام اتفاقات تابستان آن سال، هنوز هم حس خوبی نسبت به زنبورها دارم، اول جولای 1964میلادی، توی رختخوابم خوابیده بودم، و منتظر بودم زنبورها پیدایشان شود، به چیزی فکر می‌کردم که «روزالین» درباره ملاقات‌های شبانه با زنبورها گفته بود؛ او گفته بود: «زنبورها قبل از مرگ جمع می‌شوند.»)؛ پایان

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 15/08/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 05/07/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Anna

Rating: really liked it
It was ironic that I read most of this book on Mother's Day. At the core, this book isn't about race relations, the Virgin Mary, or even beekeeping, though those are all interesting parts of the story. It's a book about mothers. Mothers who are imperfect, mothers who make mistakes, and women who become mothers because they see people who need to be loved. I can't readily connect to most of those other topics, but everyone on the planet knows what it's like to have--or need--a mother in their lives.

The other part I loved about this book is the writing style. I've read very few books with such fanastic, simple imagery and accessible symbolism. I wish I underlined all my favorite metaphors in the book (like the dragonflies stitching the air) and I loved the parallels between the bee colonies and the women living in the pink house. It's books like these that make me want to write.

Rae Walker

Rating: really liked it
This was a harmless, heart warming book that did not change my life or enrich my thinking in any large way - except perhaps that I am slightly less afraid of bees. One thing that is a slight pet peeve with me is the healing power apparently inherent in the culture of the 'other'. Here is the formula: 1 caucasian person, hurt and broken by the world they live in, be it by family, work or environment + 1 minority culture (black or asian is fine) = that one caucasian person finding the true wonders in life and becoming a more secure and happy human being after being surrounded by drove of their black or yellow or red skinned friends, who show them beauty and love such as a white person has never known. Thank you minority culture! All black women are not royalty, "like hidden queens". But a little known fact is that all, ALL old asian men are kung fu masters.

To summarize, I might criticize this book but I did read it in a weekend and there is something to be said for the ability of an author to keep his/her readers engaged. It is a good beach book. So there.

Megan Baxter

Rating: really liked it
Is it ever not going to be problematic to have a book about a young white girl finding nurturing black mother figures in the South? It's not the book itself, necessarily, just the part where this is practically a genre unto itself, and I haven't run into any books (certainly not with the stature of this one) about the young girl in the South who is black, and her experiences. Also the part where the black women are mostly there to mother the young white girl, and all of their differences tend to come down to eccentricities.

This is probably unduly harsh. The Secret Life of Bees is not a bad book - it's an easy read, it's a comfortable read, even in its portrayal of the impact of the Civil Rights movement on a small town that is interacting with it mostly through the media. It's just the overall impact of the stories authors are choosing to tell, that publishers are choosing to publish, and readers are choosing to read.

Does someone have something to recommend to me that breaks out of this mold?

Lily is the only daughter of an unloving white man. Her mother died when she was very little. She and Rosaleen, the black woman who raised her after her mother's death hit the road after an altercation between Rosaleen and the biggest racists in town. They find themselves in a small town in South Carolina, where they are both more or less adopted into the family of three black women, sisters, August, June, and May.

Lily struggles with how to tell the sisters who she really is and why she's there, as well as anger and guilt about her mother and father. Meanwhile, the sisters nurture. August takes care of the bees and takes Lily under her wing. June, a school teacher, refuses to marry the man she loves. May feels the horrors of the world far too sharply. Other black women come to their house for their own brand of syncretic worship, focusing around a statue of a Black Virgin Mary.

This book deals with some fairly difficult issues, so why do I categorize it as not particularly challenging? It deals with abuse, suicide, racism, and violence. None of those are easy topics. And yet, this book never reached out and grabbed me by the throat. It seemed to dance over these topics, not ignoring them, but not fully engaging with them either. It lacked anger, and some of these issues deserved some anger. (There were angry characters, but they were mediated by the nurturing aura of the book itself.)

I think part of the problem was that every time I picked it up, I kept pulling away from it, wondering why we so often seem to need this mediating figure of the young white woman in order to tell these stories. Wondering where the books about just August, and June, and May were. Or Rosaleen. Are they not being written? Or not published? Or am I just entirely oblivious to a bunch of books I should be reading?

Crossposted to Smorgasbook

Jeffrey

Rating: really liked it
I surveyed my class and 80% gave it two thumbs up: 5 stars. That's 28 out of 35 students. The rest of the class gave it an OK: 3 or 4 stars. So my giving it 5 stars has been backed by research into the general public's taste. ;=)

Now, I'm not much for spending time on fiction. I don't need entertainment, I need information. But as a story teller, occasional writing class instructor, I like to keep up with some of the new fiction.

Bees is pretty good. I don't get a sense of the forced or trite here like I do in a lot of fiction. In reading most fiction, I can almost hear the writer thinking. I guess it's because I write and my intimate knowledge of the craft allows me to see a lot before it comes. Kind of like an actor who you know is just acting. But Kidd's writing is like Will Smith in Ali or Jamie Fox in Ray. In Ali there is no Smith and in Ray there is no Fox. Art works best when it's done by the talented who tap into the moment so right, so purely it stops being art and becomes real. Bees is real.

Some readers on Goodreads and Amazon had trouble with such things as the bee quotes at the start of each chapter being a bit obvious, the religious theme (didn't state but I'm sure it has to do with the women eating cake as the body of Mary), the triteness of a coming of age story and some of the characterization (ie: stereotypical African / American women) and so forth, but I believe these are more personal problems than problems with the story. In the overall scheme of analysis, these issues were cosmetic, superficial at best. Most liked it: In my class. At Goodreads. On Amazon.

I find it humorous that many of the pseudo-reviewers / intellectuals (if I throw in some over priced words, I'm a big-time reviewer) love to sling review-speak but have no or little experience in hands-on experience: writing. Maybe it's writer-wanna-be frustration or other personal issues. There’s a lot to be said for freeing oneself of inhibiting characteristics / weaknesses and the success and release of open-mindedness. Nevertheless . . .

Bottom line, I was impressed and I've read a lot of stories and written many myself. I know the difficulties involved in making a story work, making is real, and connecting to readers. This book does all that and more. Highly recommended.

Ceecee

Rating: really liked it
4+

I have no idea why I didn’t read this years ago so it’s a case of better late than never. The year is 1964, the place is South Carolina and President Johnson has just granted the Civil Rights Act which ‘tears things open further’. Lily Owens mother Deborah died when she was four, her ‘onery’ father T. Ray blames her and the only real affection she gets is from their maid Rosaleen. After an incident when Rosaleen goes to try to register to vote, the pair have to leave town quickly and head for Tiburon where they end up living with the Boatwright sisters who produce honey......

This is a beautifully written coming of age story in which eventually Lily finds both peace and love and equally importantly, a real home. I really like how central to the storytelling, apart from the magic of bees, is the power of women, not just the Boatwright sisters and Rosaleen but their friends in the Daughters of Mary. This links to another important theme of spirituality through the Black Madonna. August Boatwright is a wonderful character of great wisdom and patience as she shows Lily the way through her pain and loss. There are several instances where there is tension, in particular racial tension, with several characters experiencing horrific racist treatment which breaks your heart. The book captures the times extremely well as Lily realises the significance that some people attach to skin pigment. Lily’s relationship with her father is very difficult and although T.Ray is a horrible character she comes to appreciate that he has lost much too. This does not forgive him his appalling treatment of her or his lack of love. Lily is intriguing, she’s very complex, an accomplished liar who doesn’t know when to stop over egging the pudding but she is also creative, very brave and loyal to Rosaleen. The secret life of bees element produces some fabulous images and demonstrates what incredibly wise insects they are which August reflects on and demonstrates.

Overall, this is touching and emotional in places and tense and heartbreaking at others covering harsh issues but giving strong messages about love and it’s healing power.

With thanks to NetGalley and Headline:Tinder Press for the copy in return for an honest review.

Nicole

Rating: really liked it
This was such a sweet story not my usual type but nice nonetheless. I wasn’t fully invested in it sadly, I still enjoyed it but not enough to raise my rating to 4 stars.

I wanted to review this book but weeks went by and I didn’t get the chance. However, upon reflection, I realised that I have nothing to say beyond the first 2 sentences.. it’s not a memorable book at all nor left an impression on me. It’s one of those that I’ll eventually only remember reading because of the title and the fact that this book is popular but not because of the story itself.

The movie honestly looks more fun than the book. I listened to the audiobook and the narration was good, not enough to make me love the book more but if you’re into audiobooks and want to read this book, then the audiobook is a safe choice especially since it’s told by two distinctive narrators (if i remember correctly).

Jason Koivu

Rating: really liked it
Read it. Enjoyed it. Any day now I expect to be entirely swallowed up by my own home-grown vagina.

If you've read The Help, you don't need to read this. One contemporary coming of age book about a white southern girl amongst black women discovering life in 1960s is plenty.

Sue Monk Kidd's explosively popular (I'm going to go out on a very sturdy limb and guess that this was an Oprah book) The Secret Life of Bees is a perfectly enjoyable read that any mother would love. Oh the imagery, the ambiance, the estrogen! Halfway through I wanted nothing more than to curl up in my cardy on the couch with a cuppa herbal something-or-other and sip the sweet nectar of these succulent words. They flowed like honey: sweet, warm, and slow…

Oh so slow at times. There are only two or three moments in the 300+ pages that woke me from the pleasant droning (get it? the bees?) that entrances, captivating the reader's mind and attention. The soft ideas about religion, love and the mother-daughter bond hum against your ears, the buzz of thought never going beyond a distant whirring zzzzzzzz.

EPI

Rating: really liked it
A coming-to-age novel set in South Carolina at the height of desegregation. Lily is a lovable pre-teen who'd grown up believing she killed her mother (accidentally) and is trying to escape a brutal, abusive father. Filled with a cast of eccentric characters, Lily runs away with Rosaleen, a black servant, and finds herself in a beekeeper's sanctuary, where secrets come spilling out of the closet for a cymbal-clashing ending. Although rendered very close to the voice of a believable pre-teen, the prose is riddled with cliches and mawkishness and characters who liked to stare off into the distance whenever a dramatic moment came to pass. Here's an example, "The music sheplayed was the kind that sawed through you, cutting into the secret chambers of your heart and setting the sadness free." The father was a cardboard one-dimensional ogre, with no redeeming feature whatsoever.

The most rewarding sections were the dialogues, and the characters of the Daughters of Mary as well as the beekeeper, August and her sisters (named after the summer months, June and May) as well as Lily's flirtation with the black young male helper, Zach Taylor. There were also great dramatic moments, when the stories surrounding desegregation rose to the fore (although the style tended to underdramatize these sections).

Honestly, it's hard to fathom how this book was nominated for the Orange Prize, and an excerpt was selected as a Best American Short Story, as well as becoming a phenomenal number one bestseller.

Brenda

Rating: really liked it
Fourteen year old Lily was so tired of her father yelling at her, forcing punishment on her almost daily, accusing her of things she didn’t do – so when Rosaleen, her nanny since her mother’s death when she was just four years old, was arrested and beaten by white men – with the police looking on - Lily decided enough was enough. The racial prejudice in South Carolina in the 1960s was oppressive and cruel – Lily couldn’t work out why skin colour made such a difference.

With no plan other than to get away from her home town of Sylvan, Lily and Rosaleen headed in the general direction of Tiburon. The mystery surrounding the death of Lily’s mother, and the little bit she knew about her, pulled her in that direction. But where they would go from there was anyone’s guess.

Sanctuary was granted to Lily and Rosaleen when they found themselves at the garish, bright pink home of beekeeping sisters, May, June and August, whom Lily called the Calendar Ladies. As Lily worked with August and the bees, and Rosaleen in the kitchen with May, Lily found herself confused and lost. Would she ever find peace? She was a white girl living among coloured women – her heart felt soft with love toward these women, but the white population of the town didn’t understand. Would Lily ever find out what happened to her mother all those years ago?

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd is a beautifully written masterpiece in my humble opinion. I loved the writing; the descriptions; the humour sprinkled through the story. There was sadness and love, hope and forgiveness – but ultimately The Secret Life of Bees is the coming of age for a young girl who had more than enough tragedy in her life. I highly recommend this book; my second by this author…