The Secret Life of Bees

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd was a spontaneous read for me. It was sitting on my roommate's bookshelf and I opened it. I mean, I had heard good things about it and had intentions of reading it at some point. And so I did. Before I had read it, and even during, people would comment on how good it was. This was one of the first books where I was surprised at how neutral I felt about it. There's nothing, absolutely nothing, wrong with the book--but I didn't love it. For having heard such good things, I am surprised at my own blankness about it. 

The setting of the book is in South Carolina in the 1960s with the premise of  racial conflict. Lily Owens is the main character as a white 14 year old girl, who's mother has died at a young age. It leaves her to live with her racist father, and her black nanny on a peach plantation. Through the story, Lily is trying to resolve issues from her family and past meanwhile growing into a young person. As far as the story goes, the plot is fairly simple. She runs from home, she discovers herself and things about her mother, conflict is resolved, and the end. 

One of the things that surprised me about the story was how fanciful it was. In my reading experience, the majority of novels set in the 1960s and have African American persons have not been happy stories. So, really I can't say that the setting fits the story, or at least the outcome of the story. It is too unrealistic in the sense that this 14 year old girl gets everything she wants. For me, there was not enough tension in the story. The majority of the middle section of the book was a lot of just... nothing. I can't even think of a word for it. Events do happen, relationships are built and developed. But the story is not defined but this huge chuck of the book. It's possible that I did not reach an emotional connection to the characters, or lost interest. 


The disappointing thing is that I've been wanting to read this book for so long, I want to like it. I want to love the book. It's even in a genre that I generally would love (not to mention the writing style is very similar to my own fictional writing style). But the story was so neutral. It seemed to be missing a crucial element. I would not be surprised if the movie was more of an emotional experience for me than the written (and original) version. That will be for a different time, however.

Unmoved,
Emily