I'm thinking of a book...

I’m thinking of a popular book, one that was recently adapted into a movie.  It is set in the South around the 60’s and features a young white female protagonist who forms a strong and loving relationship with older black females.  No, it’s not The Help; I’m referring to The Secret Life of Bees.

It’s a coming of age story, set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement in America, which makes it a prime high school summer reading book.  That’s how I found out about this book in the first place: a friend of mine had to read it for a class, loved it, and recommended it to me.  She told me that the main character was a teenage girl who, as a child, accidentally shot and killed her mother.  I was instantly drawn to the book.

I haven’t read it in a while, maybe a couple of years.  It’s set in the summer, and you can almost start to feel your clothes stick to your skin from the descriptions of the heat, humidity, haze; it invites a general lack of motivation to do anything but plop down in front of a fan and melt.  But make no mistake, this isn’t a fluffy piece of fiction.  Serious stuff happens, I won’t spoil it here, and the ending did make my eyes leak with tears.  It’s painful, living through this girl’s guilt and the inevitability of things that can’t be changed—like growing up, facing reality.  I was about the same age as the protagonist when I first read The Secret Life of Bees, so the protagonist’s trials were also my trials, sort of, and I could relate to her in a way that I won’t ever relate again just because I’m older now, more cynical, jaded, exasperated.

I have never seen the movie adaptation but I’ve heard good things about it and it seems well cast.  I don’t plan to experience The Help myself, whether in book or movie form, as I’ve read a lot of different reviews and reactions to both; I feel like The Secret Life of Bees is a better (read: more socially sensitive) book, so the movie version must be, too.  I hope that when I see it and/or I reread the book I’ll still feel good about the story and message.