For a very long time, one of my rolling New Year's resolutions was to read a book a week. I fell out of that habit for a couple of years, but now I'm trying to do it again.This week, I finished reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I think I might have been the only non-comatose person in the United States not to read this book.
It was good, but not life-altering.
Set in the South in the early 1960's, featuring a lonely and awkward teenage girl, I can see where lots of critics wanted to draw comparisons to Carson McCullers and even Harper Lee. Not even close.
The language is lush and there are some striking images, but the whole thing just struck me as completely improbable.
The plot goes like this: Awkward teenage girl is known for having accidentally shot and killed her mother when she was but a tot. She is left with an angry and abusive father and a semi-indifferent nursemaid/nanny/babysitter. The girl takes it on the lam after her babysitter is thrown in jail while trying to register to vote.
They end up in a community of black women who take them in, no questions asked. Awkward white girl falls in love with handsome black teenager. Yes, there are bees and lots of them.
The language can be beautiful, lulling and somnolent, but the symbolism and metaphors and coincidences get to be a bit much and feel heavy-handed by the time it's all over.
Grade: B minus
Features: Bees, miscegenation, caricaturized white bigots, stereotpyical all-understanding and mothering black women, ship's figurehead turned into an idol, and typical smothering Southern heat.
