The Secret Life Of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd.
Book Report, Dorthea Søiland

The secret life of bees centres on Lily’s search for clues and connections to her mother, who was killed when Lily was a little girl. We get to follow her journey as she runs away from her abusive father along with her nanny Rosaleen. Lily is longing to be loved, because the lack of it in her past life is destroying her. “People who think dying is the worst thing, don’t know a thing about life” Lily, p2.
The novel is an excellent written drama. It explores race, love and the idea of family and home in troubled times.
The author of the book, Sue Monk Kidd, is a well-known writer who has written other known books such as “The Mermaid Chair”(2005) and “A Mother-Daughter Story”(2010). She has been on the New York Times bestselling list twice, which one of them were with this very novel. The secret life of bees was published in 2002 by Penguin Books New York.

The story takes place in South Carolina in the 1960’s, which we can say is a time were racism was on it’s worst. Time and place has a lot to do with the story, and we get to look into a time were being black wasn’t easy.
The main character of the book is fourteen years old Lily. She is a brave and smart girl, whose only wish for a birthday present is to know a little about her mother. Her fear of living a life without being loved is getting her to write poems, which she’s good at.
All-tough Lily doesn’t have a mother she has a father, T. Ray. She calls him that because she doesn’t think of him as a father. He is abusive and angry and doesn’t seem to have any heart inside him. He finds ways of torturing her, not only physically but also mentally.
Rosaleen, their housekeeper and Lily’s nanny, is a black woman who has taken care of Lily since she arrived, not long after the death of Lily’s mother. Rosaleen is a caring and smart