Book Review: The Secret Life of Bee's

A novel by
Sue Monk Kidd

About the Author:

Sue Monk Kidd is the author of the highly acclaimed memoirs “The Dance of the Dissident Daughter” and “When the Heart Waits”. She has won a Poets & Writers award, a Katherine Anne Porter Award, and a Bread Loaf scholarship. Two of her stories—including an excerpt from “The Secret Life of Bees—were selected as notable stories in “Best American short Stories”. “The Secret Life of Bees”, her first novel, was nominated for the prestigious Orange Prize in England. She lives beside a salt marsh near Charleston, South Carolina.

The Book:




Recently my daughter rented the movie based on this book, starring Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning. The movie was so sweet and touching and involved me on such an emotional level that I found myself watching it for a second time the very next day. I couldn’t stop thinking about the story and decided I needed to read the book, because 9 times out of 10 the book is vastly superior.




I was pleasantly surprised that the movie had followed the book so closely, as well as preserving the beauty of language and artistry of the book. After finishing the book I have thought and pondered over the circumstances of the life of Lily Owens.


This story is set in South Carolina in 1964. The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily’s fierce-hearted black “stand-in-mother,” Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. Lily’s father is a hard, cruel person, and at this point Lily decides she has had enough of his bad temper and foul treatment. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Lily carries a picture that she found in her mother’s things of a Black Madonna with the name of Tiburon, S.C. written on the back. Upon arrival in Tiburon Lily stops at a mercantile to buy some lunch for her and Rosaleen. There behind the counter she sees rows and rows of honey with the very picture of the black Madonna that she holds in her hand pasted on as labels. She enquires about the honey and the clerk tells her of Miss August Boatwright who is a beekeeper and sells the honey. Lily feels as though fate has directed her to Miss Boatwright and goes directly to her home. Lily and Rosaleen are taken in by August and her two sisters May and June. They are allowed to stay in the Honey house; Lily earns her keep by helping August tend the bees. She is drawn into the mesmerizing world of bees and honey, the life of this loving family, and the secret of the Black Madonna.

During the course of this story Lily learns to deal with the hard circumstance of her life. I loved this book because we all have sorrow in our lives, we all seek for the empty place within us to be filled, and we all seek for peace at one time or another. This young girls search for peace and reconciliation leads her into the loving arms of a serene woman who offers her a place of healing and solace. Lily learns to deal with her contempt for herself as well as her sorrow for the losses in her life. She finally learns to love other people and learns how to let people love her back. At the end of the book she has found a way to fill the empty spot in her soul. It is a heart wrenching journey that exacted many emotional responses from me. I laughed, I cried, I was hurt, I was angry, in the end I was content; as was Lily.

My favorite part of reading this book was the joy of listening to the voice of the author.

The story begins:

At night I would lie in bed and watch the show, how bees squeezed through the cracks of my bedroom wall and flew circles around the room, making that propeller sound, a high-pitched zzzzzz that hummed along my skin. I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt the longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.

The opening paragraph is beautiful and enticing it sucks you right into the story—heart first.

Another favorite thought from the book:

The Boatwright house is painted pink, a bright Caribbean pink, because it makes May happy. Lily asks August why she painted her house pink if her favorite color was blue. August replies, “You know, some things don’t matter that much, Lily. Like the color of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person’s heart—now, that matters. The whole problem with people is they know what matters, but they don’t choose it . . . The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.”
The saddest point of the story:

Probably one or two moments in your whole life you will hear a dark whispering spirit, a voice coming from the center of things. It will have blades for lips and will not stop until it speaks the one secret thing at the heart of it all. Kneeling on the floor, unable to stop shuddering, I heard it plainly. It said, you are unlovable, Lily Owens. Unlovable. Who could love you? Who in this world could ever love you?

Lily learns this about the Black Madonna:

Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She’s not the statue in the parlor. She’s something inside of you.

I like this quote, because I too have learned that God, or whomever we accept as divine in our lives, does not magically make our pain disappear. But he gives us the strength to find our way through the difficult circumstances of life. The moment one comes to terms with their own divinity, is the moment peace enters our hearts.


I don’t have a rating system—but I would recommend this book, just because it now lives in my heart.


"The Secret Life of Bees" tuesday teaser



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