The Music of Bees by Eileen Garvin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Music of Bees is about 3 people and how their lives interweave. It takes place in an idyllic setting in Oregon near a river and lots of nature. You get splendid descriptions of the verdant scenery, white-capped waters, and the sentinel mountains. Jake is an 18-year-old boy who had an accident, Harry is an aimless mid-20s guy, and Alice is a forty-something year-old woman who keeps bees as a hobby. You get to meet them individually first, learn some backstory, and then move through their meeting. You get to learn about bees and how the unexpected can happen to change your life.
I loved this novel. There were so many things that worked well and Eileen Garvin set the right tone from the very beginning. Oh boy, can she write a sentence! I just felt love and full of warmth while reading. It was like sitting on the porch on a warm, spring day with a nice breeze while drinking some lemonade and having a chat with your oldest friend. The characters were so relatable. I found something of myself in each of the three main protagonists including feeling the need to change (and not knowing how), forging a new path, and regret. What would my life look like if I made different decisions in the past or even in the present? The language that was used and the phrasing of the words helped to create a strong sense of what each character was going through. Speaking of a young person and not having the words to describe something but then he “shouldn’t have to have the words” or “in that moment, he felt broken in a way that could not be undone.” Eileen wrote beautifully and evoked anger in me with the dad and corporate greed overriding morals. I could literally feel my chest tighten. This novel had a lot of things to say around lessons but was able to do it disguised in the general telling of the stories. You can learn to stand up for yourself. You don’t have to let your past decide who you are or where you are going. You can make your own decisions and change if you don’t like something. The Music of Bees resonated with me and this sentence hit hardest, “why was Harry a passenger in the vehicle that was his life?” What am I doing?
Read this.
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