Sue Monk Kidd: The Secret Life Of Bees

Reviewed by JAN TRELIVING-BROWN

Imagine on the one hand an ugly eruption of racial cruelty and on the other, a balmy, soothing haven built around the healing capacity of bees.

What Joanne Harris did with chocolate, Sue Monk Kidd has done with honey. This is a beautifully woven tale of immense atmosphere and it immediately takes its place on my "best-ever books" list.

Lily Owens is a white American teenager damned with the belief that at the age of four she accidentally shot and killed her mother. Ten years on, she is desperate to distance herself from her boorish and vindictive father, a South Carolina peach farmer.

Southern society is rocked when blacks queue to register for the vote, and all hell breaks loose when Lily's favourite black servant, Rosaleen, pushes racial boundaries way too far. Arrested, beaten and hospitalised, Rosaleen has no choice but to flee along with young Lily - two women running from hopelessly unjust, male-dominated lives.

Where can this unlikely and conspicuous pair find rest? Enter three black sisters, May, June and August and their bee-keeping paradise. Rosaleen and Lily are folded into the warmest and most comforting of maternal sanctuaries imaginable.

Lily begins to unravel the mysteries surrounding her dead mother's life and the uncanny way it intersected with these corpulent black sisters who venerate their bees and their Black Madonna honey alongside Almighty God Himself.

Honey is just the unguent Lily needs to salve the dark places in her soul. August teaches Lily the complexities of bee-keeping and, to her delight, Lily's a natural: "When August removed the lids, the bees poured out in thick black ropes, breaking into strands, a flurry of tiny wings moving around our faces. The air rained bees, and I sent them love, just like August said."

Comely black Zach, a fellow teen, is the next character to enter Lily's life and suddenly the prospect of socially unacceptable love rears its head.

Strong women pulling together make this an effortlessly feminist novel. Monk Kidd has previously written memoirs: The Dance Of The Dissident Daughter and When The Heart Waits. With The Secret Life Of Bees she finds her fictional voice, and paints Lily Owens with humour, pathos and just the right touch of eccentricity. It would make an irresistible movie.

Headline $24.99

* Jan Treliving-Brown is a New Plymouth reviewer.