Tracy F. reviewed on + 49 more book reviews
Books in Brief: Fiction & Poetry
* Print
* Save
Article Tools Sponsored By
By ADAM MAZMANIAN
Published: March 31, 2002
THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES
By Sue Monk Kidd.
Viking, $24.95.
Poor Lily Owens. She's 14 and still making her own dresses in her home economics class. In the halls, popular girls hush themselves at Lily's approach -- a torment that leads her to scratch phantom itches and chew her fingertips raw. Her mother died 10 years earlier from a gun accident -- one that may have tangentially involved Lily herself -- and Lily's father, a peach farmer named T. Ray, is so cruel that he makes Lily kneel in piles of knee-shredding Martha White grits as punishment for the mildest infractions. Most of Lily's thoughts revolve around fantasies of escaping to (somehow) find her mother alive. Her one clue is a picture of a black Madonna with ''Tiburon, S.C.'' scrawled on the back. She finds a way out when Rosaleen, her black caretaker, is arrested for pouring snuff juice on some white men's shoes -- a jailable offense in Sylvan, S.C. in 1964. Lily and Rosaleen eventually light out for Tiburon, where she finds her Madonna in a woman named August Boatwright, the proprietor of a honey farm that's a harbor of quiet civility. Lily is a wonderfully petulant and self-absorbed adolescent, and Kidd deftly portrays her sense of injustice as it expands to accommodate broader social evils. At the same time, the political aspects of Lily's growth never threaten to overwhelm the personal. The core of this story is Lily's search for a mother, and she finds one in a place she never expected. August and her sisters, June and May, are no mere vehicles for Lily's salvation; they are individuals as fully imagined as the sweltering, kudzu-carpeted landscape that surrounds them. Adam Mazmanian
* Save
Article Tools Sponsored By
By ADAM MAZMANIAN
Published: March 31, 2002
THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES
By Sue Monk Kidd.
Viking, $24.95.
Poor Lily Owens. She's 14 and still making her own dresses in her home economics class. In the halls, popular girls hush themselves at Lily's approach -- a torment that leads her to scratch phantom itches and chew her fingertips raw. Her mother died 10 years earlier from a gun accident -- one that may have tangentially involved Lily herself -- and Lily's father, a peach farmer named T. Ray, is so cruel that he makes Lily kneel in piles of knee-shredding Martha White grits as punishment for the mildest infractions. Most of Lily's thoughts revolve around fantasies of escaping to (somehow) find her mother alive. Her one clue is a picture of a black Madonna with ''Tiburon, S.C.'' scrawled on the back. She finds a way out when Rosaleen, her black caretaker, is arrested for pouring snuff juice on some white men's shoes -- a jailable offense in Sylvan, S.C. in 1964. Lily and Rosaleen eventually light out for Tiburon, where she finds her Madonna in a woman named August Boatwright, the proprietor of a honey farm that's a harbor of quiet civility. Lily is a wonderfully petulant and self-absorbed adolescent, and Kidd deftly portrays her sense of injustice as it expands to accommodate broader social evils. At the same time, the political aspects of Lily's growth never threaten to overwhelm the personal. The core of this story is Lily's search for a mother, and she finds one in a place she never expected. August and her sisters, June and May, are no mere vehicles for Lily's salvation; they are individuals as fully imagined as the sweltering, kudzu-carpeted landscape that surrounds them. Adam Mazmanian
Back to all reviews by this member
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details
Back to all reviews of this book
Back to Book Reviews
Back to Book Details
