The Secret Life of Bees: Buzz-worthy [mild spoilers]
Title: The Secret Life of Bees
Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Publisher: Penguin Books
Pages: 302
My rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Who will like it? If you liked To Kill A Mockingbird, you might also appreciate this book — which is a slightly more lighthearted and lush coming-of-age story set in the south. How much we adore a book depends on our own life experiences, and this book won’t satisfy everyone’s taste buds, but it’s gentle and forgiving and brimming with love.
I like the beginning of the book a little more than the last two-thirds. The first part is more boisterous and adventurous with Lily finally deciding to take hold of her own fate in a burst, and the second part narrates the building of relationships. There’s merit in those chapters too, as growth is characterized in many characters, and their relationships grow too as life goes on. The last two-thirds is like the aftertaste of honey, not as strong but lingering, fragrant, and present. Sue Monk Kidd’s voice is direct — her tone is like one of a little speaker inside your head! She doesn’t shelter us from Lily’s thoughts, and we can feel the hum and buzz and fluttering of bees directly, without a screen door blocking us from the vibrations of emotion.
I love the metaphors and motifs in this book. Every chapter — 14 chapters for the 14 years lived so far by Lily Owens — starts with an epigraph, a vignette about bees that parallel the story in a way that doesn’t take much brainpower to appreciate its beauty and significance. The epigraphs are engaging on their own but offer smooth transitions into the story, and the “secret” life of bees is a spitting image of Lily’s life on the bee farm.
The bees are always there, and their secret life reveals the parts of ourselves to discover as we grow and learn about our families, and parts of other people we don’t always see. As Lily adapts to life with the Boatwright sisters (in a sense “reborn”), she is like a busy bee learning the support from the female community of worker bees, with all her mothers from the calendar sisters to the other Daughters of Mary. When Lily first captured a bee in a glass jar and put in all sorts of sticks and pollen to keep it comfortable, the bee whizzed around frantically. The next morning, when she lifted the lid to release it, the bee stayed put, no matter how she tapped the jar. This is such a thoughtful metaphor of Lily not leaving her horrible father T. Ray because she was used to his carelessness and hatred, kneeling on grits and forgetting she could leave the life under his very roof.
As a character, Lily Melissa Owens is whiny but also lovable. Her thoughts aren’t sophisticated, and sometimes selfish and impulsive, but aren’t we all that way? She’s sweet, but boy do lies just float off her tongue without any weight! It’s like she blinks and then a lie just comes in vibrations out of her vocal cords. She runs to a random house and expects strangers to take her in, and she uses the word “hate” a little too casually. I guess it’s because she experienced so much stuff in her life, and was fed so many lies by T. Ray (one which I personally think is the fact that he killed Deborah, her mother, instead of Lily), and she just turned out this way.
Some parts of her are sporadic and so relatable, like how she explains that when you lie down now and then and get as still as you can, a steel plate in your head will slide open like elevator doors, and let in all of the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently waiting for a ride to the top. (p. 170) I love those rides and sometimes dislike them when they arise too fluidly and distract sleep.
I found her anger at her mother leaving her slightly too substantial, especially since she thought she accidentally killed her mother — isn’t that enough? But what can I say, it is her experience and not mine.
The characters are a little cardboard. I like characters with layers, who aren’t all bad or all good — but Lily is seldom patient when judging on her feet. T. Ray is the bad character who never changes his ways of hurting Lily, and his eyes do not even shine an ounce of love. Perhaps there are parts of T. Ray we never will see, but for what he has done to Lily, he is an evil dinosaur. June seemed bad in the beginning, but I empathize with June. How can you come barging into someone’s house and infinitely expand your stay? Even as a 14-year-old, it’s a little entitled to just bottle up anger and rehearse a smile when the owner of the house asks you, “How are things coming along with you, Lily?” She is a teen, but that doesn’t mean she must expect all to care for her just because of her status as a child.
The theme of racism and discrimination is not the gem of the wedding band, or the central focus of the book, but it provides the basis and adds depth and layers to the book. Sue Monk Kidd garners irony that cannot be more obvious. For instance, when the jail took Rosaleen in, after the overt racist Franklin beat her up inside those walls, Lily has an “overpowering urge to kneel down and kiss the jail-house floor” (p. 36). On the contrary, we cannot be angrier at the institution. It is the systemic racism that is so ingrained in our justice system and in prisons that permits violence to occur again and again to black people like Rosaleen. Later, when they escape as fugitives into Tiburon and nobody suspects them as criminals, Lily wants to “fall on [her] knees and thank heaven for all the poor news reporting that goes on in the world” (p. 66). We cannot help but feel the opposite — if the world knew the injustice they experienced and knew their full story without cut corners, nobody would dare to throw them into jails. If only we had more accurate reporting and a greater collective voice! Lily eventually overcomes some of her ingrained biases when it comes to loving August Boatwright and Zach too, and although this book is not about racism itself, the setting and the layered messages are well-delivered.
The entire storyline can’t be more simple, but it was still wonderful to read, to find our principles and purposes in life, and to find faith, love, and family. This book is like chicken soup for the soul. When you’re unsure of yourself, turn to page 289 and fall into August’s words, because in our lives, our purpose is not just to love but to persist in love (including loving yourself) ❤ “There’s a fullness of time for things, Lily. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course.” (p. 236)
