Skip to main content

The Secret Life of Bees

Originally published in March 2005, on my original 52 Books blog.


Just finished reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. For the sake of all the people who recommended it to me I wish I could say I liked it, but I didn’t. It was one of those books that I found to be okay, but nothing more than that. It was too predictable, often superficial and sometimes felt contrived, like Kidd felt she had to show the whole range of human emotion and just didn’t know when enough was enough.

There are redeeming points, however. The characters, narrator Lily, her surrogate mother and best friend Rosaleen, and the Boatwright sisters, especially August, are rounded and real. The story, of Lily’s coming of age in the American south during a hot summer in the tumultuous 1960’s, rambles somewhat, and could have done with a little sprinkling of magic realism. The tone it is told in screams out for something like that, and you kind of expect it from a book with such a mysterious title.

Added March 4th: On deliberation, I guess I could say that the story had potential which was not fulfilled. Kidd has the potential to become a great writer, and although I didn't like this book (her first novel), it will not stop me from reading her next (if there is one).
2.5 stars.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...
25 comments
Read more