Many people in the course of two weeks all separately told me to read this book. I'd heard of it before and thought it sounded okay. But I was not about to ignore all the prodding to read it. Felt like it was meant to bee (get it?) when my best friend shoved her copy of this book into my hands and said "You're reading this. No is not an option. This book will speak to you like it spoke to me." And per usual, she was right.
The Secret Life of Bees is a beautiful representation of love, what it is and the many forms it takes. Lily, the main character, grows up with a father who seemingly hates her and with the knowledge that she accidentally shot and killed her mother when she was four. There it is right in the first chapter. The question of love hangs heavy in Lily's heart. She dreams about her mothers love and feels the absence of it in her father, T. Ray, which is where the adventure begins. Set in the midst of the civil rights movement, the concepts of love are challenged alongside the concepts of color. And most of all the love of a mother is the thickest theme throughout this novel. Lily finds that love holds no bonds and it covers a multitude of sins. It does not have a color or a gender or a face, because it is all of these things. Running away with her black nanny Rosaleen to a place she believes her mother once lived, Lily goes in search of love. What does she find? A trio of black bee keeping sisters named after the summer months, May, June and August. What else does she find? Love. As pure and sweet as the honey the sisters make. She also gets a chance to the see the dimensions of love in all its beauty and confusion. She sees how feeling the weight of the world can drive someone to suicide and how the ones who love us grieve when we are gone. She sees the hopeless love of a man for a woman who loves him back but is terrified of being hurt. She experiences love of her own for August, who becomes like her mother, and romantic love for Zach, the boy who helps August keep the bees. She sees a love for religion like she's never seen before in the worship of Mother Mary (and her statue in the living room) that the sisters invented. A love for creation. Love for hard work. Love through pain. Love in joy. Tough love. And even confusing love, in the act of her father giving her up. You name it Lily experienced it in her time as a runaway at the Boatwright household. Her inexperience with love and lack of it at home makes it hard to wrap her mind around the concept that love is multidimensional and while different for everyone, is also the same. It is not black and white (literally and figuratively). In the end it all boils down to Lily's search for motherly love and what that means. She finds that motherly love needs no blood ties. It comes from inside of us, as all love does. It comes from our understanding that we are loved beyond all we can imagine and from that we love those around us. Lily's closing thoughts sum it up nicely, "...I stood in the driveway with small rocks and clumps of dirt around my feet and looked back at the porch. And there they were. All these mothers. I have more mothers than eight girls off the street. They are the moons shining over me." She found the power of motherly love in herself, religion, loss and the 8 black women who stood for her and fought for her out of love. I especially enjoyed how the author left the end with some mystery still. She did not explain everything, just as love does not explain everything. But having and recognizing love within ourselves and our lives changes everything.
Original photo by Brogan James c. all rights reserved
This photo is simple and has honey as the focus because honey is the metaphor for love that exists throughout this book. At the beginning it is the main focused, used for everything, "the cure all", sticky, covers everything, takes many forms and has many uses. Then as Lily begins to find the true love hidden behind and within the honey and the making of honey and "the secret life of bees" the purity, rawness and sweetness of honey is no longer found in honey but is found in the love she finds at the Boatwright's house.
Your photographs are great! I mostly love that a friend put it in your hand and declared it a must-read.
ReplyDeleteI have heard so much buzz about this book (get it). But seriously, I have been dying to read it. However, until I read this, I honestly did not know much about it. The struggle in finding the definition of love is not a unique one, but all the facets of love as expressed here is really captivating and I would love to see how she brings it all together and how they build;d off one another. Furthermore, I am interested in the fathers character. I understand he isn't the main character at all, but imagine his situation! Basically tied to the child responsible for killing his wife. I would imagine he is toying with the same 'love' struggles as Lily because it was shattered when one of his loves murdered another (although without her knowledge). I will have to push this up on my 'To Read' list.
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