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3.64 AVERAGE
3.64 AVERAGE
To say this book was weird would be an understatement. Good weird, wonderfully inventive and addictive, but weird. Like, drive to Weird, keep going until you pass through at least three zip codes and you might approach it. Weird.
Fiction. About bees. Anthropomorphized bees. Violent, scheming, Lord-of-the-Flies with claws, stingers, and hive mentality bees. A few of which had British affectations. (Not all, just the males. But it would come and go. Like Kevin Costner's accent in Robin Hood.)
At times, I thought, "Whoa! Was that too violent?" (Is it considered infanticide if the baby is a baby bee? What if it's a baby anthropomorphized bee?)
At times, I thought, "Whoa! Was that overtly sexual?" (How the bees feel about their flowers...ahem.)
At times, I thought, "Whoa! Is she dissing my religion?" (Heavy, Heavy, Heavy Catholic parallels. Not necessarily favorable ones...if you're Catholic. And don't like being compared to hive-minded bees.)
And I mentioned it was weird, right? But did I mention I couldn't stop reading? Finished it in about two days. And when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. Mostly about how weird it was. But how I couldn't wait to get back to it.
And how I couldn't wait to figure out how to review it. ;)
Fiction. About bees. Anthropomorphized bees. Violent, scheming, Lord-of-the-Flies with claws, stingers, and hive mentality bees. A few of which had British affectations. (Not all, just the males. But it would come and go. Like Kevin Costner's accent in Robin Hood.)
At times, I thought, "Whoa! Was that too violent?" (Is it considered infanticide if the baby is a baby bee? What if it's a baby anthropomorphized bee?)
At times, I thought, "Whoa! Was that overtly sexual?" (How the bees feel about their flowers...ahem.)
At times, I thought, "Whoa! Is she dissing my religion?" (Heavy, Heavy, Heavy Catholic parallels. Not necessarily favorable ones...if you're Catholic. And don't like being compared to hive-minded bees.)
And I mentioned it was weird, right? But did I mention I couldn't stop reading? Finished it in about two days. And when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. Mostly about how weird it was. But how I couldn't wait to get back to it.
And how I couldn't wait to figure out how to review it. ;)
I really wanted to like this book. It had a strange premise (it takes place in a beehive from the POV of a bee...what!?) and it seemed to have a cultish feel with how the bees worshipped their queen, but I just didn't care for it that much. It didn't seem to have much of a plot or a climax. I loved the epilogue, which was only a page and a half, but the epilogue literally made the rest of the book make sense. I guess it explained all of the events that happened within the beehive, but it was a shame that it took 335 pages to get there.
Loveable characters:
No
I don't get it.
What is the point?
Why did someone write this?
The Bees seems to be a narrative condemning a nonfactual society of anthropomorphic bees. Literal worker bees. It feels as if Paull came across the fact that: on rare occasions, a worker bee will lay larvae which the other bees destroy before killing the rogue bee, and thought wow that's pretty deep, let me write a novel about it. Except it's not deep, is it. Because they're bees. Sniffing out and killing the non-conformers is essential for the function of the hive- it's not evil it's efficient.
Sure, if the bees were humans, it would be horrific. But they aren't. They're bees. It's essentially 350 pages saying 'wouldn't it suck if bees had human emotions'. Yes it would, but since they don't, who the fuck cares?
I see that she was trying to write a brave new metaphoric dystopia, the likes of Atwoods, 'A Handmaid's Tale' and it certainly has the same ambience about it. The difference is, Atwood's novel can be applied to real contemporary human society. Paull's can never be applied to human society because humans don't live in hives governed by an apian hierarchy. In the same way, bees do not live in a cultured society with romance and religion. They even had their own prayer for fuck sake, "Our Mother, who art in labour, hallowed be thy womb..." get me a bag, I'm going to vomit.
I was also really put out by the narrative that motherhood is the answer. Motherhood makes you see things clearly, motherhood enables you to achieve your full potential. That's some bullshit and not very feminist of you, Laline.
Even if we are to put all this nonsense aside and just enjoy The Bees as an account of what life might be like for a bee, the novel still falls flat. It is factually incorrect: rogue layer worker bees only occur in hives without a queen (unlike this one), they only produce male bees (unlike these) and the entire job hierarchy that Paull is criticising does not exist. Bees are not born into their role which they perform until they die, every female worker bee performs every role throughout the course of her life. Furthermore, one role isn't more respected than another because, guess what, they're still bees, they still don't have human emotions.
My reading experience was not helped by the fact that I absolutely despised Flora the protagonist. She was deplorably pathetic and I had zero sympathy for her. Frankly, if I had been one of the bees tasked with killing her I have made sure the job got done. Second to her are the male bees. It is my understanding that drones serve only one purpose; to inseminate the queen then immediately die. So why oh why has Paull depicted them as ranking just below the queen. They do nothing to help around the hive, they help themselves to nectar stores, they don’t collect food for the colony. Where are they attaining this unfounded respect from? I can guarantee that any society where females outnumber males 100 to 1 is not insisting that "Their Maleness will take the right of access".
The worst part is that if Paull had tweaked it ever so slightly and made it a story about a futuristic human society, structured like a hive system, it would have been a really interesting Orwellian tale permeated with canonical religious nomenclature. As it stands, The Bees was unreadable, I tapped out at 150 pages.
What is the point?
Why did someone write this?
The Bees seems to be a narrative condemning a nonfactual society of anthropomorphic bees. Literal worker bees. It feels as if Paull came across the fact that: on rare occasions, a worker bee will lay larvae which the other bees destroy before killing the rogue bee, and thought wow that's pretty deep, let me write a novel about it. Except it's not deep, is it. Because they're bees. Sniffing out and killing the non-conformers is essential for the function of the hive- it's not evil it's efficient.
Sure, if the bees were humans, it would be horrific. But they aren't. They're bees. It's essentially 350 pages saying 'wouldn't it suck if bees had human emotions'. Yes it would, but since they don't, who the fuck cares?
I see that she was trying to write a brave new metaphoric dystopia, the likes of Atwoods, 'A Handmaid's Tale' and it certainly has the same ambience about it. The difference is, Atwood's novel can be applied to real contemporary human society. Paull's can never be applied to human society because humans don't live in hives governed by an apian hierarchy. In the same way, bees do not live in a cultured society with romance and religion. They even had their own prayer for fuck sake, "Our Mother, who art in labour, hallowed be thy womb..." get me a bag, I'm going to vomit.
I was also really put out by the narrative that motherhood is the answer. Motherhood makes you see things clearly, motherhood enables you to achieve your full potential. That's some bullshit and not very feminist of you, Laline.
Even if we are to put all this nonsense aside and just enjoy The Bees as an account of what life might be like for a bee, the novel still falls flat. It is factually incorrect: rogue layer worker bees only occur in hives without a queen (unlike this one), they only produce male bees (unlike these) and the entire job hierarchy that Paull is criticising does not exist. Bees are not born into their role which they perform until they die, every female worker bee performs every role throughout the course of her life. Furthermore, one role isn't more respected than another because, guess what, they're still bees, they still don't have human emotions.
My reading experience was not helped by the fact that I absolutely despised Flora the protagonist. She was deplorably pathetic and I had zero sympathy for her. Frankly, if I had been one of the bees tasked with killing her I have made sure the job got done. Second to her are the male bees. It is my understanding that drones serve only one purpose; to inseminate the queen then immediately die. So why oh why has Paull depicted them as ranking just below the queen. They do nothing to help around the hive, they help themselves to nectar stores, they don’t collect food for the colony. Where are they attaining this unfounded respect from? I can guarantee that any society where females outnumber males 100 to 1 is not insisting that "Their Maleness will take the right of access".
The worst part is that if Paull had tweaked it ever so slightly and made it a story about a futuristic human society, structured like a hive system, it would have been a really interesting Orwellian tale permeated with canonical religious nomenclature. As it stands, The Bees was unreadable, I tapped out at 150 pages.
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Weird weird book but somehow I think I liked it, I’m not sure , I have mixed feelings
An easy read. I was expecting a story about humans living in a society similar to a bee hive, but it was actually about bees in a bee hive. They’ve been slightly personified where the lines between human and not become blurred.
We follow a particular bee’s life span, Flora-717. A bee of the lowest class whose job is to assist in keeping the hive clean. However she finds herself different to her kin and quickly progressed through a series of jobs not usually attended to by her like.
We follow a particular bee’s life span, Flora-717. A bee of the lowest class whose job is to assist in keeping the hive clean. However she finds herself different to her kin and quickly progressed through a series of jobs not usually attended to by her like.
Interesting to think about life inside of a hive and I think the story does a good job of showcasing the different types of bees and what they do... but I didn't find the characters very compelling, nor did I like the way the author portrayed the authority figures in the hive.
Before I was even halfway through The Bees, I knew I was going to be sad when it was over. While it does suffer a little from the trope of Our Heroine Is The Only Special One Who Is Miraculously Good At Everything, the world-building was incredible. Paull takes things we know about bees - that the workers are divided into castes, or that the drones are indulged but basically useful only as sperm-delivery services - and imagines how this complicated society works for and looks to the bees themselves. I felt like the Orwellian allusions to class struggle were neatly done, considering these divisions do actually exist in bee society. While I'd place The Bees alongside other anthropomorphic allegories like Watership Down, I think it's best recommended to readers who want to explore future dystopias, especially those with restrictive class divisions and tightly-regulated fertility. The Handmaid's Tale and Brave New World are the first that come to mind.
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Ahh, this book is so weird and fascinating and I LOVED IT. I wanted to read it nonstop. Such an enjoyable reading experience for the first book of the year! It's certainly not for everyone, but I thought the author did a great job creating the bee world and making it compelling. At times, I wondered how it would work if she had done it with humans but in a bee-like world, but some of the violence would have been WAY over the top with humans, and the bees give it some objectivity. Now I really want to read up on how hives form.
This is the first book I have read (at least for a long time) with a non-human protagonist. It was really harrowing and nerve wracking at times, and I think Paull did a good job of Bee world-building.