The Secret Life of Bees
May 10th, 2007 by Bethany
My book club is reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd this month and I finished the book a couple of days ago. It's not actually about bees at all. The novel is a quick read about a teenage girl named Lily Owens who runs away from home, rescuing her black nanny from jail during the summer of 1964 in the Deep South.
The book has a lot of fertility cult and Mary cult themes to it, along with goddess and feminine divinity themes, which I frankly felt a little weird about. She and her nanny "hide out" at the home of a beekeeper named August and August's two sisters after running away (although August doesn't know she's hiding fugitives). All the while, she's trying to figure out (or not figure out) who her dead mother really was from anyone who knew her while keeping her abusive father from finding them.
It's a good thing I'm part of a book club, because I don't really get why this book is so great and would like to hear from the rest of the group to improve my opinion of it. As a celebration of femininity, I don't feel that it was poignant and even feel like it made women less lovely than they are. As a civil rights book it had some merit, but was pretty overtly preachy. As a coming of age book it could have been impressive, but it was diluted by the other themes. I liked that Lily dealt with her issues in the end, but I like happy endings and it wasn't a powerful, conclusive one.