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The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd

Description: ISBN 0747266832 / Author: Sue Monk Kidd / Genre: Fiction / In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected ... more

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd ... by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words Tiburon, South Carolina scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic.

Newest Review: ... black rights are being fought for, including the right for black people to vote. Rosaleen is insulted by three of the racists ... more

... in the town while out with Lily, and she pours her jug of snuff spit over their feet. This causes her to be arrested and locked up in prison, where she is beaten for being black. Lily managed to rescue her from the prison, and together they run away to Tiburon, a town which holds the secret to Lilys mothers past. They are taken in by a trio of eccentric black beekeeping sisters, and Lily learns about how to keep bees, and the Black Madonna. The three sisters are August, the one with whom Lily first gets to know a...more

Read Reviews for The Secret Life of Bees - Sue ...

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd: Race Relations (1028 words)
by luckyarchers - written on 31/12/07 (Very useful, 246 readings)
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The setting for this, Sue Monk Kidd's first novel, is South Carolina. Since her family has lived in the Southern States of the USA for at least 200 years, and she has been there most of her fifty plus years, she is well qualified to write about the region and the people in it. As for the bees in the story, she researched them well. At the beginning of each chapter is an interesting piece of information about them, taken from one of the many books she has read. She also visited an apiary. After being suited up in protective clothing she saw the bees in their hives, and went inside a honey house to see the honey making machines and equipment, and ...

A sting in the tale (933 words)
by sunmeilan - written on 11/08/07 (Very useful, 163 readings)
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Lily is a teenager living in 1960s South Carolina. She has had an unhappy childhood - her only memory of her mother is on the day Lily accidentally shot her. Since then, her father has been punishing her just for being alive. Her only friend throughout all of this grief is a black housekeeper called Rosaleen. One day, Rosaleen insults a group of white men; she is badly beaten and jailed. Lily, longing for a better life, manages to help her escape and together they flee to a town called Tiburon, where Lily believes her mother may once have been. Taken in by a family of black beekeeping sisters, Lily and Rosaleen settle in to their new lives. Rosaleen takes care ...

The Secret Life of Bees - Sue Monk Kidd: FOLLOW THE BLACK MADONNA. (1024 words)
by thingywhatsit - written on 01/07/06 (Very useful, 1189 readings)
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The secret Life of Bees. "This is a wonderful book, by turns funny, sad, full of incident and shot through with grown-up magic reminiscent of Joanne Harris" Daily Telegraph. I am not sure what made me read this book because the subject matter is not one that I would have chosen, although I found the story to have been quite a reasonable read. The cover was quite tempting, and the storyline from a buyer's perspective seemed interestingly different. My copy was given to me. The Story itself. The story centres around the life of Lily Owen, daughter of a harsh man who keeps a Peach farm, and who grows up almost ...

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