Dolly's Reviews > The Secret Life of Bees

I confess to being a little hesitant going into this book. It is, after all, that most cliched and irritating of literati faves: a coming-of-age story set in the American South. Lily, a motherless 14-year-old girl lives with her bigoted abusive father on a peach farm in South Carolina. Her goals involve befriending black people and finding information about her long-dead mother. Just summarizing this thing inspires the eye-rolling.

But the book does have some saving graces. First, the writing is incredible. Voice, pacing, transition, and word choice are all stellar. On a micro level, Ms Kidd is magnificent. For instance, despite the predictability of telling such a tale from the young girl's point of view, I thought the decision worked here. Lily herself is absolutely charming. She is completely honest with the reader, often to her own detriment. If the story had been written from anyone else's point of view, Lily would have been pathetic: abused motherless little girl who harbors way too much guilt and angst. This book could have gone off the deep end real easy. But Lily is a survivor and an optimist, and her naive faith drives this book.

Mostly. As you might expect in a story of this sort, there was plenty of menstruation angst, boyfriend nervousness, junior cheerleader tryouts, and the requisite abusive father. All of these things were painful to read. However, something that made this book somewhat fresh was the strong theme of race. For a nice chunk of the book, Lily is on the lam with her black housekeeper Rosaleen, traipsing through 1960s South Carolina after busting Rosaleen out of jail for offending some white guys. I was struck with the parallels to Mark Twain, only here the adventure was overlaid -- sometimes heavy handedly -- with a female sensibility. Nice. In fact, all of the embedded feminism was well done. Recurrent natural images of moonlight and water were beautiful and deliciously pagan. The author went to a lot of trouble to create a new religion just for girls: part Catholicism, part goddess-centered paganism, part ancestor worship. The religious aspect was interesting, but not as compelling as the author wanted it to be. I could tell she was trying to impress me with the notion of Mary as a goddess protector. But I didn't buy it. Lily bought it, though, and that was enough to keep me reading.

The whole book was a quest for independence, I think. To find confidence and drive within, without always needing that crutch of others' acceptance. The book almost achieved that. But it gave in at the last, to deliver a happy ending.

Now that I think about it, much of the book was cliche. But it was also a good read. The strength of the narrative voice saved it, and it had some absolutely gut-twisting parts. The line beginning "She was all I ever wanted" .... both painful and breathtaking.