I completely agree with the review written by Beth Kephart. In her review, she shares how this book is perfection, full of inspired language, and a deep plot. She also talks about how wonderful and lovable the characters are.
Although I find perfection is a bit of a strong word to describe this book, I definitely think it is close. The inspired language that Kephart talks about is truly well written. Sue Monk Kidd used very powerful descriptive lines, such as:
"But here, now, surrounded by stinging bees on all sides and the motherless place throbbing away, I knew that these bees were not a plague at all. It felt like the queen's attendants were out here in a frenzy of love, caressing me in a thousand places." (Page 151)
That paragraph truly described how the bees made Lily feel and brought us right in the swarm with her. As I read it, I felt as peaceful and loved as Lily did.
Kephart also brought up the well planned and executed plot. Throughout the book Lily was just taking a break from T. Ray and her horrible life, while trying to figure out a little bit of her mother. She just assumed that her mother had visited August once before, or had just been in that town. It was amazing how Kidd was able to have a deeper plot, with August and June knowing the truth of Lily's mother and letting Lily lie to them for months. It was incredible learning that August knew all along and was just giving Lily her needed space.
Finally, Kephart mentioned that the characters were so well developed. As I have already commented on this point in my journal entries, I will only talk briefly on them now. August cares so much about Lily and her sisters and the bees. She started off just seeming like a nice women who was taking care of a stranger, but ended up truly loving Lily, as she had once loved her mother. May had such a deep loving soul, that having her die was heartbreaking. She took on everyone's pain, which was very peculiar, but also showed her deep empathetic feelings. June was truly interesting as she ended up hating Lily only because of her mother. She was scared to love anyone and once she lost May, she finally opened up and loved Neil. Lastly, I will talk of Lily. She had gone through so much trauma at such a young age, but didn't let that stop her from being such a caring person. She didn't let all the bad events bring her down and was able to become a truly kind and wonderful person.
Beth Kephart shared some key elements that truly made this book amazing. I agree completely with her opinion that The Secret Life of Bees is fantastic and I would love to read another book by Sue Monk Kidd.
Sarah S
June 5
You are Beth Kephart are both correct on the fact that the characters are so well developed but it may be hard to see when or how they develop. The small actions each character does, really improves the development of characters and in the book I could see some but it was hard. A big example was during the beginning when Lily fled her home. This developed her character to be very brave.
ReplyDelete- Nick
It may have to been a bit hard to notice at first, but I find most were pretty obvious. It wasn't always obvious but you could really see the change of each character since the start of the book to the end. An example is how June used to hate Lily, but now loves her. It wasn't very obvious but there were little ways to show us how they were getting close and she was changing.
DeleteSarah S