Maciek's Reviews > The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees is a cliched soap opera, the sort of book that would provoke rave responses at book clubs composed of mostly bored housewifes. It's a pretty formulaic tale of a young, southern girl whose daddy abuses her, so she decides to run away with her black servant and find solace in an unlikely place.

The story is a reversal of Huck Finn's tale, which results in a schmaltzy schlock. The novel is full of stereotypes - 99% of the white male figures are abusive bastards, the girl's father is an ogre with no redeeming features. As if to get back at all males, all women in this novel are presented as inherently good. There are about 8 mother figures in this book. This may be the reason why the novel is so popular with so many sunday feminist that scour the depths of the internet.

As the novel was written by a white woman, there portrayal of black people is as patronizing as possible. In TSLOB, black people are not people - they are accesories for the white folk to find their way. The author doesn't use any sort of vernacular or vocabulary that would suggest that a black person is speaking (after all, we are talking about the 60's south). We see black people as black only because of their neverending good actions. There are of course the obligatory magical negro figures, the beekeping sisters our heroine reaches early in the novel - they have nothing else to do but sport sage-like advice about the world, bees and honey.

Do you by any chances wonder about the premise? After all, Lily escapes to find the truth about her mother whom she most propably killed, as she remembers holding a gun and a BANG! If you're reading the novel to find out, you might as well give up - Lily's mother is killed off like Bambi's mom to start the story, which turns out to be a patronizing tale about racism. Well, the Civil Rights Movement is an important theme in the novel, and Sue Monk Kidd certainly forces the reader to wish good for these poor black women. However, she makes a mistake of toning down the racist hate - in her world, a group of teenagers of opposite sexes and races driving around the town is never noticed; in real world they would be immediately violently separated, she sent off home and he at best badly beaten. A female black servant responds strongly to three antagonizing white males and even spits on their shoes - such herocism works good in movies, but most propably would have ended less than well for the woman.. All racism comes from the white, of course; there is no single black person opposing to the white girl living with three black women and being in a relationship with a young black man. It works both ways, something which Sue Monk Kidd seems to have forgotten; she fondly remembers Marthin Luther King, but is fast to forget about Malcolm X.

Everything here is washed down; there is absolutely zero ambiguity. Black-good, White-bad. Lily escapes from her own father to be accepted without question by the black women; and in the end she won't care much about her own mother because she found new mother figures, all black of course. And her black boyfriend goes to enroll into a white school. Was that even possible back then? According to the author it was.
The white priest kicks the girl out of church because she led in a black servant, but don't worry about the religious future of the precious infant - there is a Black Madonna, and her black daughters who are more than willing to allow Lily join their club. Gah!

I can see how this book will provoke lots of discussion about its "Interesting topic" (There are classroom questions in my copy!) but it's just shallow, empty and overrated to the max. The story has been done several times and to a much better result - think Harper Lee and Mark Twain.
Steer clear of the "modern classic" - the bee isn't buzzworthy.