.................The Secret Life of Bees

.......................by Sue Monk Kidd / Review by Dan O'Connor

. . . . . This novel started out a buzzing hive in that it was very absorbing, full of action and had the backdrop of clever, albeit gimmicky, but effective similes to bee behavior. Those echoed its theme, messages, whether subliminal or overt, and I was quite enthusiastic about its potential and eager to read on.

. . . . One of the things my editor warns me about, however, is mid-novel sag or droop. Honey must drip at a fairly slow rate. I'm not sure whether honey drips slower than molasses or not. Whichever is slower best represents the pacing of this novel through about five-sixths of the piece. Staying awake while I read it became a preeminent challenge.

. . . . It portends to touch on social consciousness issues, which I feel passionately about, but they were addressed in such a trite and predictable manner that my pallet was left with a sickening aftertaste, like those days when you were a kid and ate so much holiday candy that you were ready to vomit by nightfall.

. . . .Bad sign: I couldn't wait for this novel to end, not because I wanted to know the ending. I only had a casual interest in that, but so that I could get onto something better, something reminiscent of the last novel I read, which I gave five stars.

. . . .There was slight flourish at the end but not enough to pull me or the overall experience out of the doldrums. I think it was the trite and predictable nature of the story during it's middle phase that ruined this book for me.

. . . . This evaluation would not be complete, however, unless I went back to the proposition that The Secret Life of Bees was on the USA Today 150 bestseller list for 145 weeks, as of this review, and once reached number five on the list. Why is this? Two things come to mind: i. the analogies to bee behavior, including their principal product, honey, were very clever and for the most part directly on point with the human behavior they were offered to mimic. This is what we call a "concept" novel. ii. the trite and predictable, told in a sickeningly syrupy way, must not put off a great deal of readers, not nearly as many as one might think.

. . . . In the end I was disappointed relative to what I had expected of this acclaimed novel with a proven track record of sales. I would have been more disappointed, but it was so short that it took only a few hours to read. See below for my further, more definitive observations.

Dan's		Book Review Report Card

Major Character Development
		Lily	B-
		August (barely developed)	C+
		May (hardly what I'd call developed at all) Ditto: June	D+

Dialogue		Convincing and appropriate to the story	A

Narration / Prose		First Person / Lead character only	B

Pacing		Slow to the point where I had trouble staying awake	C

Storyline Issues
	Continuity	Storyline outline clear and concise?	A
	Drama	The drama at the outset was first rate, but the middle of the book was muddled. I was so numb by the end that I barely felt the tension.	B-
	Character arc	Was classic protagonist character arc present and compelling?	B+
	Conclusion (AKA The Ending )	Poetic, appropriate, plausible and compelling ?	B-

	Social value	Did I learn anything of value, either in terms of knowledge or insight into life?	No

	Author rating	Would I rush out and buy another novel written by this author?	B-

Overall rating		Thumbs up. (For cleverness and novelty of the link with bees) / Three stars!	B-

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