The Secret Life of Bees

by Sue Monk Kidd

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

• ISBN10: 0670894605
• ISBN13: 9780670894604
• Publish Date: 28 January 2002 (first published 8 November 2001)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 5 March 2013
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc
• Imprint: Viking Press Inc
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

Lily Owens runs away from home in search of answers about her mother, and ends up in the bright pink house with the three Boatwright sisters who teach her about kindness, love, bees, her mother, and the world. In a summer filled with bees, laughter, and heartbreaking loss, Lily learns what it's like to be free, and to be loved.

I love The Secret Life of Bees - book AND movie - and I can't believe it's taken me this long to re-read the book. I love August, June, and May and wish I knew women like them in real life, which is one of the signs of a well written novel. If the characters seem so real and perfect you want to meet them, then it's good. The story wraps you up so well in the world of Tiburon that it flies by even though the story is relatively slow-paced and easy.

While there are important issues addressed - racism, for one - I like how the pink house feels like a refuge from these things. People are people at the Boatwright home, and there is so much love to go around. It's a beautiful setting and a book filled with beautiful people and I love it.

[ladygrey]

I sort of loved this book. It's rich with metaphor and allegory that I could mostly totally relate to. The language, not just the dialog, is so Southern it feels warm and alive in a wonderful way.

The characters are so strong, so completely enfleshed it's easy to know them, to love them and pity them. They bring life to the story and give it texture.

It's laced with themes, layer upon layer of messages and truths, realities and admonitions about life, grief, hope, fear, faith and love. All of this gives a depth to the story, a poignant significance.

I love the bee lore, also. [a:Sue Monk Kidd|4711|Sue Monk Kidd|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1574862600p2/4711.jpg] has said, "There's a mystique about bees, a kind of spell they weave over you." I first fell under it when I read [b:Chalice|2828595|Chalice|Robin McKinley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348582210l/2828595._SX50_.jpg|2854698]. This was a much more practical and realistic bee spell, but it was wonderful nonetheless.

My one disappointment is that I saw the movie first and my very favorite line, my very favorite moment from the movie, the moment I wanted so much to see how it was written, wasn't in the book.

[Whitney @ First Impressions Reviews]

The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters who live in a peptobismal pink house introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household.

This book was a little to touchy feely for me, all the hugging, praying,finding yourself crap was ya-ya sisterhood on a smaller scale. I found it extremely predictable i.e. Lily's mother living with the "calender girls" May, June and August ten years prior.

I really had to plow my way through the ending of this book {I just couldn't take all the happiness} and felt like taking peptalbismal for upset stomach after reading.

[Eve1972]

Fabulous book, love it!