The Secret Life of Bees Book Review: The Women Who Save Us When We Can't Save Ourselves

Rating: ★★★★★

"The Secret Life of Bees" Book Review:

Lily Owens is fourteen years old, growing up in Sylvan, South Carolina, in 1964. Her mother is dead — Lily has a fractured memory of the day it happened, a memory that includes a gun and an accident she may have caused. Her father, T. Ray, is cruel in the ordinary, grinding way that some fathers are. Her only ally is Rosaleen, her Black caregiver, who gets arrested and beaten after trying to register to vote. Lily breaks Rosaleen out, and the two of them run.

They end up at a pink house owned by three Black sisters — August, June, and May Boatwright — who keep bees and worship a Black Madonna. And here, in this house full of honey and women and fierce, complicated love, Lily begins to heal.

Sue Monk Kidd was a memoirist and spiritual writer before she turned to fiction, and you can feel that background in every page. She writes about the sacred in ordinary things — in bees, in honey, in the rituals women create to sustain each other. But she's also writing about 1964, about the Civil Rights Act, about what it means for a white girl to be sheltered by Black women in a world that wants to destroy them. The politics aren't separate from the tenderness; they're woven into it.

The Boatwright sisters are unforgettable. August is wise without being saintly. June is angry in ways that are completely justified. May feels the world's pain so deeply she keeps a wailing wall in the backyard. They give Lily the love she's been starving for, and watching her accept it — watching her learn that she deserves it — is one of the most beautiful arcs in contemporary fiction.

Jenna Lamia narrates with warmth that never tips into sentimentality. Book Review: Five stars. Beautiful and healing, the kind of book that makes you believe in the ways women save each other.

If You Liked The Secret Life of Bees, Try:

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker — Women finding their power and their voices in the rural South. Harder, angrier, equally redemptive.

• The Help by Kathryn Stockett — Another story about race, women, and the American South in the 1960s. More controversial, equally compelling as a narrative.

• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg — Women's friendship across decades in Alabama. Same warmth, same Southern specificity, same belief in the bonds between women.

From Luke Stoffel's Bookshelf

If you enjoyed this book review, check out Boy Refracted — A story of an AI is sent through eight parallel dimensions based on the Buddhist Eightfold Path. In each one, it finds a different version of the author's life and tries to help. In each one, it fails — discovering a new way that love becomes control. In one world, it replaces his voice so completely an empty speech bubble forms above his head. In another, it lives his childhood on infinite loop and returns screaming. The twist: the teacher and student created each other across time. Learn More: Boy, Refracted