Seeking the memory of mom

Purists would dismiss the novel as mushy, with characters that reflect racial and gender stereotypes.

The Secret Life of Bees
Sue Monk Kidd
Penguin
2004
Fiction
Pages: 320
Price: $ 9.00
ISBN: 0142001740
Paperback

Purists would dismiss the novel as overly sentimental, with one-dimensional characters that are little more than caricatures of racial and gender stereotypes. The women are all black and wonderful, the men are white and terrible. Not-so-little Lily is innocent and misunderstood. So the women turn away and create a haven of their own, finding strength in each other’s company, as they do in the presence of the Black Madonna, the wrecked shiphead that is worshipped by the women’s fellowship with a fervour bordering on hysteria.

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There’s no arguing that the gender and racial lines are too pronounced, but once you get beyond that, the novel is fairly enjoyable. It’s a simple coming of age story of fourteen-year-old Lily’s search for any news related to her dead mother, whom she accidentally shot dead as toddler. Lily’s pluck — and also sheer luck — helps her get her snuff-chewing nanny Rosaleen out from a prison hospital, where she’s recovering from a severe beating for having insulted white men. Mistreated by her book-hating, peach-growing father, Lily runs away with Rosaleen in tow. The two end up in the pink house of the Boatwright sisters — called May, June and August — of the bee-keeping and honey-making fame.

Here they are temporarily safe from the evil white men who perpetuate all the violence that takes place in the novel. August Boatwright and her Black Madonna — who comes with a wonderful legend of magically breaking free of all chains of bondage — become the twin symbols of love and strength, and more than once you wish Kidd would tone down on the imagery and just get on with the story.

Even the self-absorbed Lily, who is obsessive in her search of a mother surrogate, finds it impossible to escape the social violence in South Carolina at the height of the civil rights movement. However, the broader racial injustices that were a part of life in 1964 remain incidental to the story and never overwhelm her search for love of the maternal kind. She does find love of the physical kind with a black boy, but he’s too much in the periphery to merit any more mention here.

The first chapter — with Lily’s book-hating, peach-growing father T. Ray and the mysteriously absent mother — promises a lot more than what the novel finally delivers, but if you haven’t had enough of Harper Lee and Reynolds Price, you’ll love this one.