Sue Monk Kidd is an American author who sometimes writes fiction, sometimes writes self-help books. At the time of writing she's penned nine books, the most recent being 2020's The Book of Longings, a novel.
In The Secret Life of Bees a young white girl living in the South in the 1960s escapes to a family of strong, empowered black women. And yes, that description sounds super "woke," and yes, I suppose it is. Anyhow, she escapes to said house and learns about both the art of keeping bees and the discrimination with which her housemates contend on a daily basis, thereby coming to new understandings of herself, her personal history and the region in which she lives.
In other words it's your typical Lifetime movie fodder, or in this case the inspiration for a wider release motion picture that not many people saw. The starring roles in the movie went to Queen Latifa and Dakota Fanning, two actresses who probably did what they could with a somewhat derivative, less-than-inspired script. I haven't seen this movie, mind you, but I imagine that it's a far cry from The Help or other, more concise attempts at storytelling.
The movie was, nevertheless, an opportunity to improve upon the novel. Instead of having the protagonist wait a staggering six months for her heart-to-heart conversation with her host, the movie could have reduced that waiting period to a more believable few weeks. Instead of overemphasizing a kind of backyard Catholicism, the movie could have minimized that aspect, keeping the theme of female empowerment without dwelling on the cult-like aspects of the characters' belief in a "Lady of Chains." The movie could have also minimized the crying jags at the end of this book, and instead cut to the chase, fast forwarding to the protagonist's confrontation with her father. This father, for that matter, could have been a more fully realized character, instead of a cartoonish villain plagued by a sense of loss that's never really explored.
Now of course I haven't seen the movie, but it might have done some or all of the above. Given its 60% score on Rotten Tomatoes I'm sure it fumbled some of the plot elements described above, but it might be interesting to compare the movie and the book.
The novel itself? Eh, it's OK. I've read much worse. It's no Gone with the Wind or anything, but it's OK.
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