Hello,
It’s been a while since I sat down to write, but I missed it.
Since we’ve been in lockdown, I have tried my hand at many things, but I kind of neglected Instagram. I had almost two weeks in which I didn’t read anything besides some old Economist issue lying under my coffee table. Then my boyfriend said: “why don’t you read this lovely yellow book in Romanian; it’s been sitting on the not-read shelf for a while.” And that brings me to today, I guess!
Do you know those books you see in a bookshop, those that are always in the bestseller pile, right next to the entrance, that even if you were going there twice a year, you’d still find there? The books that you’re like “they sound fine”, but you’re still a bit iffy about spending your buck on? This was one of them for me. Then, when Secret Santa rolled around at the office, I thought that instead of writing down ‘book’ on a sticky note praying for the best (I got a YA novel the previous year doing just that) I would save myself the face palm and write down something tangible because:
- not everyone reads
- not everyone cares to look at your goodreads
- why complicate it?
And I got exactly what I wanted. Sort of. Can’t say the iffy was very off on this one.
The author is Norwegian and we all know from that part of the world you get a lot of environmentalist trends. It’s not bad, I appreciate that. I try to be conscious of what’s going on around me, I try to cut back on my plastic use, I try to reuse as much as I can and not invest my money in fast fashion. I am aware, I pay attention, but I’m not a radical.
This book looks at how the world would be like if the bees were to disappear. We have three years we follow in parallel: 1852, 2007 and 2098. The telling is not linear, it’s as if the story is sliced in the middle. Neither starts from its narrative beginning, nor does it end at its narrative end. All three characters are caught only at a significant period of their life; we know very little about their origins or their demise. There is some going back and forth, but nothing spectacular or worth mentioning.
The first timeline starts in 1852. We have Thomas Savage, who had a mental breakdown and didn’t get out of bed for months. His numerous family (7 kids, and his wife Tilda) watch over him but they are growing frustrated, because a family without a head is a family exposed to ridicule from society. Before marriage and family life, Thomas was a scientist, particularly interested in botany. He also owned a seeds and condiments shop to support his family. He secretly dreamed of making a breakthrough that would align him to the great scientific minds of the time, but shifting priorities rendered him impotent, hence the mental breakdown. Then one day he is given a book about bees by his son, at which point, his interest is spiked. Reading everything that is available to him, he works with one of his younger daughters to perfect the hive and make it more practical and easier to use than anything the world has seem before. What he doesn’t know is that he’s not the only one working on the perfect hive. At the time it was difficult to know what happened anywhere outside your locality. Is he headed into a new mental breakdown?
In 2007, we have George. I can’t remember his last name. His family have been beekeepers for generations, every year being a cycle. He’s a traditionalist, he doesn’t bow down to the industrialization of the field, which often leaves him with smaller profits than his neighbor, with his modern shiny equipment and small-town fame. Nothing changes, year after year, until news spreads of farmers confronted with the sudden disappearance of bees. From one day to the next, beekeepers would find their beehives empty, with no dead bee in sight. When it happens to him too, in this countryside paradise, several questions are raised: where did the bees go? What made them change camp? And how to continue living like you always have with the very source of income gone from one day to the other?
In 2098, we have the world after the collapse. Bees have disappeared, but China found a way to make food without them. People climb in trees and pollinize the flowers manually so they bear fruit in autumn. Just imagine the effort required for such a task. Tao, our main character is one of those people, working long hours, living frugally with her husband and little son Wei-Wen. Days off are a luxury and when one such day rolls around, they plan to celebrate it with a picnic at the edge of the nearby forest. One second is all it takes for the kid to disappear from their sight. They find him unconscious near a tree, otherwise unharmed. The ambulance takes him away and that’s the last time they ever touch him. The doctor in charge of him suddenly no longer works on his case. Then the kid is transferred away to Beijing. No explanation is given to the aggrieved parents. Once not knowing becomes unbearable, Tao decides to go to Beijing and find her son, or at least what happened to him. The overall invisibility of the State, gives you sudden dystopia vibes that are only magnified by the secrecy surrounding the kid’s condition. Ironically, the culprit responsible for her child’s ‘illness’ may as well be the salvation of the entire community. Is he still alive?
In the first part there’s a lot of information about the history of beekeeping. The second part was a bit philosophical. The third one was full of character movement. Or at least, as much action and you can stick in 1/3 of a 300+ pages book.
And from this comes the fatal flaw of this novel.
On the back, it was compared with Cloud Atlas and having read Cloud Atlas I can say this is a really threadbare brother from another mother of that book. Yes, the structure is similar, past-somewhat present-future. Yes, Cloud Atlas sets out to punch you in the face with its message by the end, and every mechanism gears towards that. Yes, you have a mélange of genres, with dystopian sci-fi among them.
But the work that is poured into Cloud Atlas……The three stories, the seen and unseen mechanisms that operate, the linguistic artistry put into giving each time frame its own unique feel and identity, the character and world building…. If you take a piece of this out, it is perfectly coherent on this own. It’s a masterpiece.
While this is not bad, to put an equal between the two would be misleading the reader. Especially if you liked Cloud Atlas as much as I did.
In this, character building is very sporadic. We have skeletons of characters, so you can’t say you’re stuck in a static reflexive state. Let’s get the bee part done, sprinkle some wife, son, depression, done! -> that sort of thing.
The world is coherent and functional, but too minimal to my taste. And that doesn’t help you bond to any of the characters. The purpose of the main thread is to build up tension for the climax, but so often I see books that at 85% are like ‘ok, so we made it this far, time to close things up really quick’.
Not compatible with tension building, if you ask me.
I rooted for Tao because she was the one having the most impact; the other two threads collapsed on each other to lead us to the moment in which she would find the truth.
What’s interesting about her part is that the author spent so much energy explaining how well structured and surveilled was their community. Then her son is taken into the hospital and we never see him again. She is not given a diagnosis, and all the people involved are no longer reachable. The forest will be soon encircled by soldiers. And you think ‘what if they locked them in a room to arrest them for trespassing into that big dark forest? What if they sent the kid away as punishment, as they wouldn’t afford to have another one? Oh, that, buying the chance to have a second kid. Then old people left to die because the state can’t afford to take care of them (!!!) Then Tao goes to the library in Beijing to read about what might have sent her kid in shock. Then nobody stops her from taking all the books to her hotel room and you feel ‘I bet someone’s going to catch her there and teach her a lesson’. Then they do and you’re like *screaming internally*. But the authorities say ‘we know what you discovered, and we want to speak to everyone about it, it’s revolutionary’
And there you are ‘WHAT THE ACTUAL HECK?!?!?!’
I wish it didn’t move from one genre to another like a pendulum. I wish she would have taken the extra 100 pages to better develop the stories, so they had more flesh and less flutter. The action just fluttered, like a bird stuck in a trap.
Even if it hit sideways for me, I tried to keep the action of the book as condensed as possible. Maybe you like these sorts of things. Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it’s my experience with it as of now.
I’m always a bit bitter when I read a queen of the bestseller aisle and think just how many people went through the same experience as I did and invested into this, ending up a bit disappointed in the end. It’s a hit and miss, always, but with the prices of books going up year after year, I can’t afford filling my shelves with misses. Because of clutter and because being a 2.5, 3* book, I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be reread anytime soon. Which is a shame.
That being said, I hope you enjoyed this review and let’s pray the next one is going to be a delight!
Did you read any duds lately?
Pic from here
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