by Laline Paull
This book is completely different to anything I've ever read before. And I do read quite a lot.
Basically, The Bees is a story about, well, bees. It follows a year in the life of a bee hive and OH MY GOD I had no idea of the kind of crazy, brutal, terrifying Orwellian society that exists inside a beehive.
The protagonist, Flora 717 is born into the lowest class of worker bees (the sanitation caste) and narrowly avoids immediate execution due to her differences - she is "excessively large" and "obscenely ugly" and as the bee police say, "Deformity is evil. Deformity is not permitted". Flora is instead taken away by a priestess from the high-ranking Sage caste and put to work in the hive nursery, among other workers from higher castes, as part of a "private experiment". This is great news for Flora, as her lowly caste are normally not permitted in such important roles and instead spend their days cleaning up corpses and disinfecting areas where the (completely disgusting) male bees have been. Still, the future's not exactly bright for Flora, as the Sage sisters are constantly snooping over her shoulder and they are scary - cold, totalitarian and merciless.
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| All looks pretty innocent, right? IT'S NOT! |
There are vicious beatings and beheadings on a regular basis. The "Fertility Police" roam the hive at will, spreading terror and tearing workers limb from limb whenever they choose. The hive is under constant threat from those they call "the Myriad" - predators including wasps, spiders, rodents and humans, all of whom will destroy the meticulously constructed hive to steal the bees' carefully guarded honey. There is thinly veiled tension between competing clan groups in the hive and there is constant irritation caused by the slobbish, uncouth male drones (who also provide a little comic relief in a novel that's otherwise fairly dark). Changes in the landscape around the hive mean that food is becoming scarce and to make matters worse, winter is just around the corner.
I honestly do not know how much of the detail in The Bees is scientifically correct and how much is author creation, but every detail that I googled (what? the workers eat the drones' penises?! surely not!) turned out to be disturbingly correct, so I'm assuming that the bulk of the detail in The Bees is true to life. It is quite literally keeping me awake at night to think that the little beehive next door is housing this kind of terrifying society.
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| This is a photo of worker bees throwing a particularly useless drone to his death. This really does happen. I checked. |
It is certainly unusual to find a novel based around a cast of non-human characters and I don't think I've ever read a book where the characters are all insects (outside of kids' picture books). Author Laline Paull handles this masterfully - somehow it never seems weird that Flora is a bee. She is relatable and likable as a character, and even her unusual motivations (Accept, obey, serve is the bees' mantra and Flora is utterly dedicated to serving her hive) are understandable in context of the very complex, rule-based society of the hive. The bees communicate largely through scent, vibrations and their antennae, with the Hive Mind playing a large role - these are all concepts that should be very odd and alien to human readers, but somehow this is all perfectly understandable. To be able to show your reader their world from the point of view of a completely different creature is a very impressive achievement.
Never gimmicky or cutesy, The Bees is a fantastic insight into the world of bees and a compulsive read. Absolutely outstanding.
9/10
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