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A review by jacki_f
The Hive by Gill Hornby
2.0
This is a semi-satirical novel about mums at a small primary school and about the way they revolve around the "queen bee" who runs the fundraising committee. We focus on a core group of 5 or 6 mums who all have their own place in the social standing: inside the clique, desperate to join the clique or immune to the clique. The story follows a school year as they go through their own individual dramas and the pecking order at school gets shuffled.
If anyone should have liked this book, it would be me, because I am highly involved in my children's primary school. I also think that it's a topic that's crying out for a novel. There was a recent article in Boston Magazine entitled "The Terrifyingly Nasty, Backstabbing, and Altogether Miserable World of the Suburban Mom" (you can find it on line) which shows how real and hurtful these kind of dramas are. But this book just doesn't work. We don't care about any of the characters, we don't explore any feelings in depth and the "queen bee" is so simplistically lazy and selfish that it's virtually impossible to believe that everyone wouldn't see through her.
Plus the "bee" metaphors drove me crazy. The analogy is clever but it gets rammed home again and again. Naming characters like Bea and Clover and Heather. Naming the school after the patron saint of bees. Frequent lectures from Rachel's Mum about how beehives work. Enough! I get it!
While there are amusing moments here and there, it's overall a tedious read. A friend described it to me as like "Fifty Shades of Grey without the sex".
If anyone should have liked this book, it would be me, because I am highly involved in my children's primary school. I also think that it's a topic that's crying out for a novel. There was a recent article in Boston Magazine entitled "The Terrifyingly Nasty, Backstabbing, and Altogether Miserable World of the Suburban Mom" (you can find it on line) which shows how real and hurtful these kind of dramas are. But this book just doesn't work. We don't care about any of the characters, we don't explore any feelings in depth and the "queen bee" is so simplistically lazy and selfish that it's virtually impossible to believe that everyone wouldn't see through her.
Plus the "bee" metaphors drove me crazy. The analogy is clever but it gets rammed home again and again. Naming characters like Bea and Clover and Heather. Naming the school after the patron saint of bees. Frequent lectures from Rachel's Mum about how beehives work. Enough! I get it!
While there are amusing moments here and there, it's overall a tedious read. A friend described it to me as like "Fifty Shades of Grey without the sex".