Forty-four-year-old Alice Holtzman is stuck in a dead-end job, bereft of family, and now reeling from the unexpected death of her husband. Alice has begun having panic attacks whenever she thinks about how her life hasn't turned out the way she dreamed. Even the beloved honeybees she raises in her spare time aren't helping her feel better these days.
In the grip of a panic attack, she nearly collides with Jake--a troubled, paraplegic teenager with the tallest mohawk in Hood River County--while carrying 120,000 honeybees in the back of her pickup truck. Charmed by Jake's sincere interest in her bees and seeking to rescue him from his toxic home life, Alice surprises herself by inviting Jake to her farm.
And then there's Harry, a twenty-four-year-old with debilitating social anxiety who is desperate for work. When he applies to Alice's ad for part-time farm help, he's shocked to find himself hired. As an unexpected friendship blossoms among Alice, Jake, and Harry, a nefarious pesticide company moves to town, threatening the local honeybee population and illuminating deep-seated corruption in the community. The unlikely trio must unite for the sake of the bees--and in the process, they just might forge a new future for themselves.
Beautifully moving, warm, and uplifting, The Music of Bees is about the power of friendship, compassion in the face of loss, and finding the courage to start over (at any age) when things don't turn out the way you expect.
Comment: One more impulsive choice at the library, a book by an author I had not heard of before. The blurb made this seem like a cute story, but my active imagination was also thinking if there would be some romance as well...
Alice loves to take care of her honeybees and she is now quite knowledgeable in how to help them prosper. Since she is can easily get distracted thinking of them, it's no wonder she hits the wheelchair on the road, with her truck full of bees, but she discovers the 18 year old she hit is in need of emotional saving, just like Alice herself, in fact. They become friends and when Harry, an adrift young man seeking work, arrives for an interview at Alice's farm the trio joins forces to not only help the bees but also find a way to stop a big company from spreading pesticides that will ruin the farms all around. These three friends have personal issues that aren't easy to fix in one day, but can their friendship be the start of the change they all need?
The only expectation I had of this book was to see if there would be some romance in it, even though it is clearly a "woman's fiction" story. Besides that, I hoped it would be a cute story with the add-on of the bees content, a subject that I only know the bare minimum since my grandfather also used to have bees. It also helped that it felt like it would be an easy story to read.
The main character is certainly Alice, a 44 old woman who is leading a very predictable and boring life, especially since the death of her husband. However, Alice is also a woman who needs to have a goal in life and she finds it by needing to take care of her bees and of Jake, the boy she run over, and Harry, the young man who is aimless. I liked Alice and the main idea of this novel is clearly yo show us how she decides to improve her life and take charge of the small things she can, indeed, change.
The two boys, Jake and Harry, also have important roles and I say this because we have their POV too, but they are quite different. Jake still mourns the loss of mobility and Harry is one of those people who is a pleaser and doesn't want to cause waves. I actually thought perhaps the point would be to make them a couple that Alice would help, but that was not the way. Jake needs a purpose, a way to think he is as worthy of a job and of being helpful, and Harry of learning he can have a future. I kind of liked both their arcs.
The writing style is pretty solid and fluid but I must say I think the three POVs were a little distracting at times. I think the author did a good job setting up the characters' personalities and why their behavior is one things at first and why/how it changes as the plot moves along, but there wasn't as much depth or subtlety to the their evolution. The characters do the right things, they go through the emotional click they need to in order to move on, let's say, but there isn't a real connection to me, as a reader, to see how this really impacts them. More show, less tell, as often happens, is what this needed.
Besides the personal issues of the characters, the big theme in this story is the importance of bees and how nowadays the farming and agricultural policies are being so intensive and demanding of quick results, as in many other areas of course, that there doesn't seem to exist a real comprehension of why it matters that some "old fashioned" methods have successfully existed for so long. The planet's sustainability is a serious issue and it might seem that bees should not matter as much, but science definitely proves they do.
Thus, I liked this side of the novel too, the attempt to bring awareness to how important it is to do something while it's still possible. The author did a good job linking this with the characters and their roles and what they are suppose to embody (resilience, resourcefulness, recovery) but it was also a little too suitable. I can see there was an agenda for this story, more so than a real fictional plot we are supposed to feel invested in, but... well, I did hope for more.
No comments:
Post a Comment