"Most people don't have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don't know anything about"
-August, page 148
-xoxo Honeybees
PS! This is our last post. We found this a nice way to end the blog. Thank you all for reading our blog! It has been so much fun bloging, especially because of all the nice comments.. Lol, jk. We have not gotten any.
We enjoyed reading the novel "the Secret Life of Bees," and we just loved the book. But we are not the only ones. Now were going to show you comments, and views on the book from other people.
"Wonderfully written, poignant and humorous." -Joanna Trollope (author)
"Eccentric, inventive and ultimately forgiving." -Anita Shreve (author)
"Charming, funny, moving." -the Times (newspaper)
"Thies is a wonderful bok, by turns funny, sad, full of incident and shot through with grown-up magic reminiscent og Joanne Harris." -Daily Telegraph (newspaper)
"Uplifting and warm-hearted, this is a moving novel." -Literary Review (magazine)
"A moving first novel...Lily is an authentic and winning character and her story is compellingly told. The bees presage her journey toward self-acceptance, faith and freedom." -USA Today (newspaper)
these are only a few comments on the book, there are so many different views of the book, and if you want your own, you got to read the book :)
-xoxo Honeybees
"Putting black cloths on the hives is for us. I do it to remind us that life gives way into death, and then death turns around and gives way into life."
-August, page 206
August and Lily
- xoxo Honeybees
Before we started reading the book, we had high expectations because we had heard so much positive things about it. At first, when we started reading the book, we did not think it was that good and it was dificult to understand the characters. Later, when we got to know and understand them, it became more interesting to read.
The book was good in our opinions, because not every book gives you a feeling of friendship to the characters, but this truely did. When the charcters were happy, we were happy for them.
We recomed this book to people, especially to girls, who like a good love story, but also a book with a deeper message under the superficilal lines.
- xoxo Honeybees
One of the themes in the novel is racism. It has a huge part of the story and the time the story is about. Another theme is mother-daughter-love. Lily wants so badly to have a mother that loves her and it is all she wants in live. We also learn that Deborah marries T. Ray because of Lily, and comes back after running away, to get Lily. The story brings out the long lost mother-daughter-love that both Lily and her mother wanted. Forgiveness is also a big part of the story. Lily struggles with the fact that everybody, including herself, is blaming her for her mother's death. One of the main parts in the story is therefore that Lilly tries to forgive and finds herself. She also forgives her mother, and her father in the end of the story. There are many girls in the book. The girls in the story are strong, and independent. Together they get powerful and they show great girl-power trough everything that happens. Therefore, girl-power is a theme in the book.
There are many symbols in the book, one of them are the black Mary. She can be a symbol of a mother and a roll model, which is really central in the story. The black Mary is also a symbol of racism because nobody has seen Mary as a coloured lady. Many thinks that Mary is a white girl, and this is exactly how it was in the society in that time as well. Everybody thought that to be white was the only right way, and everything else was wrong. This is very typical in the setting of the book. Another symbol is the bees. The bees can be a symbol of being in prison, like Lily was living with T. Ray. The bees have a queen as their leader. This shows that we can have a female leader. It is also a symbol of girl-power, which is one of the main themes.
The story to the novel "The Secret Life of Bees", is about Lily and her life. Can the story also be about something else? We think that when we read the novel, we also read a story about racism, civil rights, and the differentes in the same town during the 1960's. We follow the story of black people and how they lived in the 1960's. They did not have their rights, so we follow their fight against the society. We also think the story is about finding yourself. A travel from being a little girl with so many questions, to grow up an knowing more about the world. Lily "finds" herself in the end and she manages to forgive.
Racism Mother-daughter-love Girlpower
- xoxo Honeybees
In "The Secret Life of Bees", we get to follow a fourteen years old girl named Lily. She lives with her abusive father, and Rosaleen, their black housekeeper. Lily's mother is a mystery; Lily does not know much about her, except that she died when Lily was a little girl and Llly was the one who killed her, by accident. Lily's mother was the only one who cared for her, and now she feels like there is no one who loves her in the whole world. Lily feels a lot of guilt and she cannot forgive herself for killing the only one who loved her. She wants to find out the truth about her mother. When Rosaleen gets in trouble with racists, Lily decides to run away from her miserable life, with Rosaleen. Lily and Rosaleen ends up in Tiburon, Carolina, with three black, honey-making sisters. The sisters let them stay there, and Lily and Rosaleen help and work with the sisters. They stay in the house for a long time and they become a family. In the end, Lily finds out that her mother used to live with the sisters when she was a young girl. In addition, she finds her answers to all of her questions about her mother and finally learns to forgive herself.
This is what you need to know before you can read and understand our analyse of the book.
- xoxo Honeybees
Often when young girls watch movies they think "Wow! I want to wear the same outfit as the girl in the movie!" Well, we was thinking that when you see the movie "The Secret Life of Bees", you shall have an oppertunity to wear almost the same outfit as the main character: Lily Owens. We have made an exampel on how you easily can get the look of Lily Owens, who is the girl in front of the picture.
You can by almost the same shorts as Lily is wearing at HM for only 245 NOK. It has the same length and color, so if you use them well you will get the same rough look as the ones Lily are wearing. 
This top is in several colors and even though there was not a picture of it on their website, you can by it (in a yellowish color) at BIKBOK store for only 199 NOK.
- xoxo Honeybees
"Please, Lily, you are insulting your fine intelligence. Do you have any idea how smart you are?"
-Mrs. Henry, page 16
A picture of Lily, who is the person Mrs. Henry, her teacher, is talking to.
- xoxo Honeybees
We think some of the quotes in the book are perfect to describe the plot and the characters. Therefore, we are going to post some of them here at the blog. The first quote is about love. We have chosen to post this quote because this is an important theme in the book.
"Our mother said she was like Mary, with her heart on the outside of her chest."
-August, page 97
This is the Black Mary, August is refering to.
- xoxo Honeybees
We are three girls who have read the book "The Secret Life of Bees", written by Sue Monk Kidd. We are going to write about the book and our opinions about it, but first we will give you some information about the author.
Sue Monk Kidd was born in August, 1948 in Albany, Georgia. She was raised in the small town Sylvester, who clearly had an influence on her first novel "The Secret Life of Bees".
She has always had the gift for writing, and even though she got encouraged by her English teachers to become a writer, she ended up as a nurse. She worked as a nurse for about ten years, and in that time, she met her husband. It was not before in the 1980s that her writing career started. She wanted to write fiction, but she started to write articles for different newspapers at the beginning. It did not take long before she published her first books, "God's Joyful Surprise: Finding Yourself Loved", in 1987, and "All Things are Possible", in 1988.
After that, she wrote many books. Not fiction like she had in mind but mostly about Western religion, theology, and spiritually. Sue Monk Kidd wrote a short story version of "The Secret Life of Bees" in 1994. When she won a number of awards for the short story, she wrote the novel "The Secret Life of Bees". The full novel was published in 2002. She used her own experiences in the story and her personality has clearly affected the book. She was from the countryside and she had a dog named Lilly. Necertheless, she is a feminist and you can see strongly "girl-power" in the book. She has won many awards for the book. It was also adapted for the stage in 2004, and in 2008 it was made a movie.
This is a picture of some of the characters in the movie "The Secret Life of Bees". From the right, August, May, Rosaleen, June and Lily.
- xoxo Honeybees
