The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four years old. Now, at fourteen, she yearns for forgiveness and a mother’s love. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh and unforgiving father, she has only one friend, Rosaleen, a black servant.

When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily chooses to flee with her. Fugitives from justice, the pair follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world as about the mystery surrounding her mother.

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The Secret Life of Bees is a novel that I picked up on a whim.  I’d heard of it – it’s sold over 8 million copies according to the cover of mine, so it’d be hard not to – but I knew very little about it prior to reading it.  The main protagonist is Lily – a 14-year-old girl whose mother died when she was just 4 years old and whose father is an unpleasant individual to say the least – cold, uncaring, and extremely harsh at times.  He seems to see his daughter as a hinderance more than anything, and expresses no affection towards her whatsoever.  Lily has grown up believing that her mother’s death was her own fault – and has even been told as such – but with only vague memories, she’s unsure as to what really happened.

Reading a novel from the perspective of a 14-year-old can sometimes be difficult, but I found Lily to be a great character.  She is smart in bookish terms, reading voraciously when she can even though her father doesn’t approve – something that tells you plenty about him.  At the same time, she is naïve, but the author avoids the cloying naivety that makes you want to shake some sense into a character.  Instead, we meet a girl on the cusp of womanhood who’s had a sheltered upbringing under a heavy hand, and who, through no fault of her own, simply hasn’t had the opportunity to experience the world and everything that it has to offer and to form her own opinions. 

Given Lily’s age, there is a coming-of-age element to the novel, and I thought that this aspect of the story was particularly well done.  She isn’t perfect, and doesn’t claim to be, and I loved seeing her journey open her eyes, both to the lives and experiences of others, but also to the prejudice that she has unintentionally developed and that she soon recognises to be wrong.  It’s so brilliantly handled, and Lily’s growth is entirely organic as a result.  While the novel doesn’t extend into her future, there’s a sense of her developing into a sensible, smart young woman who can do anything she sets her mind to. 

The novel is set against a period of change in America as Lyndon B. Johnson brings the Civil Rights Act into force.  As Rosaleen – effectively Lily’s nanny since she was four – attempts to register to vote as is now her right, we see that while the law may have changed, the attitudes of some individuals still have some catching up to do.  After Rosaleen is attacked by three men who don’t want to see her as an equal, Lily and Rosaleen go on the run.  It is perhaps a little farfetched, although the reader can understand Lily’s desire to get away, and after helping Rosaleen, she leaves herself little choice.  She takes the opportunity to try to find out more about her mother in a quest that will ultimately result in her finding out the truth about her mother’s death. 

The Secret Life of Bees is a fantastic novel exploring racial prejudice and the importance of found family.  I loved reading about Lily’s experiences after she and Rosaleen go on the run, and while there is perhaps an element of luck in their journey, the reader’s questions are answered satisfactorily by the end of the novel as the author brings the various threads of the narrative together. I found it to be an easy read despite the minor elements of violence that take place, and it’s one that I highly recommend.

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Book 1 of 20 Books of Summer 2024.