The Secret Life of Bees is the first novel by Sue Monk Kidd. I made the mistake of reading The Mermaid Chair (her second novel), first, and along with the 568 customers who reviewed the book over at Amazon, I disliked it. So I did not immediately go pick up Bees for fear of a repeat waste of my time. Every time I saw this book I was tempted, but Mermaid kept me for buying.
Lit Flicks and the combination of Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Hudson in the movie had me change my mind. And I'm really glad I did.
The book is 300 pages long and I finished it in about 16 hours. It takes place in the South in the 1960s and LBJ has just signed the Civil Rights Act. That part of the book is fascinating, and the relationships the women have are interesting too. Some of it feels underdeveloped or a little surface-y, if that makes sense, but it's 300 pages. What can you expect?
Overall, highly enjoyable, and parts of the prose are just fantastic. Kidd has kind of a flare for the dramatic, and every "scene" is ended with some dramatic line like: "And the spider went into the hole, peeking his eyes out to look at me, as if he knew I had done something wrong." (That's not in there, I made that up). It's almost like she needs a knew way to transition.
Sadly, the movie is no longer in theaters and doesn't come out on DVD until February 3rd. Which is why this review is either too late or too early. But I'll update with the movie review and how off it was. Here is my prediction, they don't mention May's twin, gloss over Daughters of Mary (if mentioned at all), and ignore most of the back story on the mother. I bet they keep the voting, the gun, that dad and a little on Zach. Very little.
My question ... how is little Dakota Fanning going to handle such grown-up material? I look forward to letting you know.
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