Rating: 
Summary: Engaging but predictable
Review: Traveling this holiday I saw at least a dozen women reading this book on trains and planes. It is a sweet story, but caters too carefully to it's audience - creating a world of women-centered spirituality and family without enough reflection or insight. The bee metaphors get, forgive me, sappy, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Riveting
Review: This book was absolutely amazing. Ms. Kidd's sensitivity to the feelings of human beings was shocking. The feelings Lily, May, Rosaleen, August, June, and Zach shared with each other were described with such detail it felt as if Ms. Kidd was describing you yourself. An amazing author, Ms. Kidd is someone to watch for if you like emotional and politically correct books, just as The Secret Life of Bees was.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Book
Review: I am a frequent reader, and hadn't heard anything about this until a stranger walked up to me after seeing me looking through the books at Costco. She pointed to it, and said that she loved it so much she wanted to pass that along to anyone else that might enjoy it too. I thanked her, and bought it just because of the strange circumstance. I have to say that I truly loved it. Right from the start, it gets your attention. I hate books that you have to be patient with to "get into" like The Poisonwood Bible. It's a fairly easy read too, so it's great for commuting (which is when I read) or any place you can't sit and really concentrate. But overall, this is just a great book that gets you thinking. There is a lot going on, both in the story line, and psychologically. When I find myself looking forward to reading more, that's when I know it's a good book, and I definitely felt that way about this one. Get it, and enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: a secret world revealed
Review: What fascinated me about this book was its tantalising glimpse into the hidden world of voodoo and its references to the Black Madonna. A really excellent book I've recently discovered is Vodou Shaman by Ross Heaven, which really set the whole of The Secret Life of Bees into context. If you enjoyed Kidd's book it's worth buying Heaven's too as the latter really enriches and adds depth to the first. A really great present to yourself!
Rating:
Summary: the not-so-secret life of a well-written book
Review: THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES easily ranks as one of the best reads I've encountered all this year, and one of my favorite books ever. Many friends and coworkers had read it as a book club selection, and talked constantly about how much they liked it, loved it, couldn't wait to see the movie, etc...Now that I've read it, I can tell you all the good things you've read are true. Sue Monk Kidd has a real way with the English language: the book has many passages that you find yourself going back to read a second and even third time before moving on. There were even just expressions or a metaphor that caught my eye, and made me think how richly the words convey the story and draw the reader into the lives of the book's characters. As a few hundred people have already written reviews, I won't waste time summarizing the plot or character descriptions. Just click the "ADD TO CART" or "BUY WITH 1-CLICK" button now on the upper right-hand corner of the page! My edition of the book included an interview with the author. One question asked her if she is going to write a sequel to SECRET LIFE OF BEES and she says she has considered it, but has not made a decision one way or the other just yet. I hereby cast my vote for her to continue the story sometime if not right away. This is simply a terrific book and a great example of "new" or "modern" Southern literature. Don't waste time reading the reviews comparing it to Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: I am quite certain that Ms. Kidd didn't have that book in mind when she set out to write SECRET LIFE OF BEES. It stands on its own as a wonderful Southern Novel. I should know--I grew up in Alabama! :)
Rating: 
Summary: This book is overrated
Review: I bought this book to read on the airplane. It's light and entertaining but I expected more given all the talk about it. I was surprised at how one dimensional the characters were, particularly the black women who live to nurture white children. The bee theme was initially interesting but only served to delay the realization that this was a boring story.
Rating:
Summary: --A Sensitive and Engaging First Novel--
Review: THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES is the story of a motherless girl and is both heart warming and sad. The story is told by fourteen- year-old Lily Owens who lives on a peach farm outside of Sylvan, South Carolina, with her father, who is a mean and nasty man. He's unable to conceal the hate he has for his daughter or his deceased wife. Since the age of four, when her mother was accidentally killed, Rosaleen, a black servant, is the only person to show love and concern for Lily. The girl has a few keepsakes from her mother, including a picture of a black Madonna with the name, Tiburon, South Carolina, written on the back. Lily has no idea what the picture means or what it had to do with her mother. It's the year of 1964, and the Civil Rights Act, a turbulent time in the South. One day as Lily and Rosaleen were walking near town, several bigoted men insult and harass Rosaleen and ask her where she's going. She replies that she's going down to register to vote. When they continue their insults, she retaliates by pouring her snuff jug, filled with black spit over their shoes. The men brutally beat her up and she ends up in the police ward of the hospital. Because Rosaleen had taken a paper fan from a church, she is charged with theft, assault and disturbing the peace. Lily breaks her out of the hospital ward and the two of them end up heading for Tiburon. In Tiburon, they meet several sisters who live together and support themselves by keeping bees. The story comes together, and eventually Lily learns about her mother and the meaning of love, caring and forgiveness. The beekeepers are interesting and the parts of the book concerning their lives make a delightful read. Every chapter in THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES begins with a quotation about bees and relates to the unfolding story. Chapter Eleven begins with "It takes honeybee workers ten million foraging trips to gather enough nectar to make one pound of honey." Taken from BEES OF THE WORLD. This is an excellent story and kept me mesmerized until I completed the last page. I would love to see this made into a film.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best audiobooks for adults I have ever heard!
Review: Even six months after listening to this audiobook the pleasure of that listening experience remains with me. It didn't surprise me to later realize that this reader, Jenna Lamia, also narrated one of my favorite children's audiobooks which I had heard with my daughter while driving in the car together last summer, [Hope Was Here, by Joan Bauer]. This particular story, by Sue Monk Kidd, was touching without being maudlin, and Lamia's reading truly drew in the listener from the very first moment. It's the story of an adolescent girl named Lily who lives on a peach farm in the South with only her father and a black woman named Rosaleen, who has been taking care of Lily since the death of the child's mother ten years before. Lily's father seems somewhat brutal and unsympathetic, and offers little comfort to the lonely child. When Rosaleen, who provides the only warmth in her life, gets into trouble defending her right to vote Lily joins her in leaving home. They flee with only a souvenir which once belonged to Lily's mother as a clue to where they are heading. This momento helps lead Lily and Rosaleen to learning more about what happened on the afternoon of Lily's mother's death. Lily's memory of the day her mother died is confused and conflicted, and she leaves hoping both to protect Rosaleen as well as to find out more about her mother. They also meet a very interesting family of sisters whose lives on a bee farm take up a significant part of the story. Lamia's reading is both innocent and tender, and reflects a profound understanding of Lily and of the South before the sixties and the Civil Rights movement which is contemporaneous with this story. The relationship between Lily and Rosaleen is also examined at length, and many sensitive emotional and social issues neglected by the 'politics' of history are illuminated by the tale. Both the story and the reading draw the reader into the era and the characters in a way that only fiction can create a bond of identification with the reader. ALthough I am sure the book is a wonderful story on its own, I can't help but believe it has been greatly enhanced by the voice of Jenny Lamia.
Rating:
Summary: Hmmm...
Review: Lily, 14, lives with her unloving father on his peach farm. He leads her to believe she accidentally shot her mother when she was 4 (the writer hints he may himself have done the deed, although we never find out for sure) and tells her that her mother walked out on her before that. The main issue troubling Lily - whether she was loved by her mother or not - forms the main core of the book. Lily's black maid, Rosaleen, is arrested for an out-of-character incident while trying to register as a voter, and is put in jail. Lily falls out with her father, runs away from home, springs Rosaleen from captivity as she leaves, heads off to Tiburon, and eventually settles down with sisters running a honey farm there, with various experiences added in, and finally uncovers some of her mother's past. Lily is (yawn) yet another book character who wants to become a writer (it would be nice to read more books where that isn't the case). The writer sets out to manipulate the reader's feelings from the outset, and then tries to play on them throughout. Lily is minus a mother, and (what's more!) her mother walked out on her and (what's more!) she may have killed her mother and (what's more!) her father doesn't love or appreciate her. "Feel sorry for me please" is what is required of the reader. After 300 pages of this, the intelligent reader gets a bit tired of it. "Get over it, Lily!" This book is really a girly book about feelings, most suitable for teenage girls of about 14 to 16 rather than anyone more mature, playing on their own feelings by creating a continuing cynical search for our sympathy, and mainly dealing with subject matter which would be of more interest to females than males. The plot is narrow, too simplistic and uninteresting (an easy escape from jail; Lily and Rosaleen easily taken in at the honey farm) and eventually becomes tiresome. The writing is simple and shallow. The religious elements are just silly. Men are relegated to the bad guys or to minor characters in the book (I was left wondering, does the writer have some personal issue with men? If so, it shows through in her writing). Some amateurish aspects of the writing interfere with enjoyment of the book too. Dozens of phrases (e.g. in similes or thoughts) are employed which are meaningless or are wide of the mark or are badly written, and which cause the reader to pause and say, 'actually, that idea doesn't really make much sense!' or which are simply silly. Also, rather too often, Lily is made into an omniscient mindreader by the writer, being able to detect the thoughts of another person merely by observing some vague movement of the face or lips. Lily herself isn't a very appealing or likeable character, and we don't really get to know her very well except from what the writer tells us by way of reaction to her experiences. She tells lies. She steals (e.g. fans/snuff). She has a tantrum (the honey throwing incident). She is too self-centred. It doesn't occur to her after she runs away to get word to her father immediately that she is safe, so she's selfish or inconsiderate too. Eventually she comes across as a somewhat tiresome, shallow, silly girl. The writing is mainly self-centred autobiography on her part. Why should we be interested in her? The writer tries to make her main appeal to the reader her hardship of being motherless, unloved by her father, a runaway and maybe having accidentally shot her mother, but she bleats on about those things so much that in the end, after 300 pages of this, the intelligent reader loses sympathy for her and her teenage angst. "Get over it!" The quotes from various bee books heading up each chapter unfortunately rarely have much connection with the text of the chapter following, so they become pointless. It would have been more sensible to use a quote which actually fits neatly with the chapter text below it. This is a reasonable attempt at a first novel, but it was rather slow and unexciting and shallow and there isn't much to be gained by reading it. The book lacks intellectual depth. The writing is weak in places, and the book doesn't really have anything to say: it is just about obvious interplay and feelings generated between particular characters in a life situation. The writer could usefully be more careful to employ phrases which actually mean something or which are true, rather than being so vague or inaccurate in places that phrases end up annoying the reader who is reading the text carefully. A more involved plot, and not so much time dwelling on the same points, and less time trying to found a novel on the tugging of our heart strings, would have been better. Whether or not this book appeals to any particular reader depends on what that person wants to get out of reading novels. Some people may delight in it. The prolonged attempt to manipulate the reader's sympathy towards the main character purely by reason of her past eventually irritated me and I couldn't wait to reach the last page so this read was finished.
Rating:
Summary: A gift I give myself....
Review: Once in awhile, I reread a book that, in retrospect, has made a big impact on my reading "consciousness". Such a book is Sue Monk Kidd's "The Secret Life of Bees". Deceptively simple in its execution, Kidd's first work of fiction is a touching coming of age tale of young Lily Owens, bereft of a mother she can barely remember. Lily escapes abuse at the hands of her father T.Ray, and takes along the black woman, Rosaleen, who has cared for her since her mother died. Set in the late 60's, when the cause for civil rights was alive and bleeding in the nation, Lily's story of the search for her mother's real truth coincides with the struggle for civil rights in rural South Carolina. Lily finds shelter, warmth, and perhaps a lifelong vocation in the home of three African-American sisters, all a little damaged by life. It isn't until she's lived with them for some time that she comes to know what they meant to her mother, as well. Kidd's symbolism, ability to create the bond between women with her words, and her well-researched use of the religious power of the sisters' symbol, a black Madonna, can be compared to some of the great writers of our time. I find her story of love, hope and integrity, set in an ambiguously racial
setting, to be reminiscent of Harper Lee in "To Kill a Mockingbird". And although Kidd lacks a strong masculine figure in the manner of Atticus (one reason why the book may not resonate as well with a male audience), she can tell a tale of quiet heroism as well as the finest. This holiday reading was my second of Kidd's beautiful book. There will doubtless be many more.
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