The Bees
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4.5 • 98 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
Shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015
Longlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize for New Fiction 2015
Enter a whole new world, in this thrilling debut novel set entirely within a beehive.
Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen.
Yet Flora has talents that are not typical of her kin. And while mutant bees are usually instantly destroyed, Flora is reassigned to feed the newborns, before becoming a forager, collecting pollen on the wing. Then she finds her way into the Queen’s inner sanctum, where she discovers secrets both sublime and ominous.
Enemies roam everywhere, from the fearsome fertility police to the high priestesses who jealously guard the Hive Mind. But Flora cannot help but break the most sacred law of all, meaning her instinct to serve is overshadowed by a desire, as overwhelming as it is forbidden…
Laline Paull’s chilling yet ultimately triumphant novel creates a luminous world both alien and uncannily familiar. Thrilling and imaginative, ‘The Bees’ is the story of a heroine who changes her destiny and her world.
Reviews
‘[A] gripping Cinderella/Arthurian tale with lush Keatsian adjectives’ Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
‘Beautifully written and unusual … Captivating … A brave and original story that highlights our modern environmental crimes, and offers a fascinating glimpse into the intricacies of bee world … Any book that changes the way we see our world surely deserves to be a success’ Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times
‘Ambitious and bold … told with such rapturously attentive imagination … The tale zooms along with such propulsive and addictive prose … Few novels create such a singular reading experience. The buzz you will hear surrounding this book and its astonishing author is utterly deserved’ New York Times
‘One wild ride. A sensual, visceral mini-epic about timeless rituals and modern environmental disaster. Paull's heartpounding novel wrenches us into a new world’ Emma Donoghue
‘This unusual and cunningly imagined thriller hurtles us through the very bizarre life and adventures of Flora 717 … Strangely thought-provoking’ Angus Clarke, The Times
‘A rich, strange book, utterly convincing in its portrayal of the mindset of a bee and a hive. I finished it feeling I knew exactly how bees think and live. This is what sets us humans apart from other animals, that our imagination can allow us to create a complete, believable world so different from our own’ Tracy Chevalier
‘It is the best novel of its kind since “Watership Down”. All the tension of a palace intrigue and the heart of a small, undaunted hero. An astonishing achievement’ Martin Cruz Smith
‘What Laline Paull has accomplished here is multivalent: a rumination on nature; a portrait of the struggle between individual and the stifling matrix of society; and a depiction of how humanity might organize itself along different lines. I’d call it, in the end, science fiction at its best.’ Paul Di Filippo, Locus
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We’ve never read another novel quite like The Bees, an amazing fantasy set in a beehive. Laline Paull’s gorgeously imagined story follows determined worker bee Flora 717, who inhabits an oddly familiar world where class means power, competitive males vie for attention and Flora’s personal desires clash with those of society. The novel’s setting is painted in sparkling detail—from the overpowering scents that permeate every walkway to minute vibrations in the hive floor that deliver important information. With tears in our eyes, we cheered on Flora as she challenges the laws of nature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dystopia meets the Discovery Channel in this audacious debut novel. Flora 717, a bee born to the lowest social strata at the orchard hive, is different than her kin. Her uncommon earnestness and skill lead her to various jobs from child rearing to food gathering and earn her the respect and admiration of her peers. But Flora's advances also expose her to the hive's questionable social order and attract negative attention from the elite group of bees closest to the queen. Like Animal Farm for the Hunger Games generation, Paull's book features characters who are both anthropomorphized and not insects scientifically programmed to "Accept, Obey and Serve," but who also find themselves capable of questioning that programming. The result is at times comic picture bees having an argument but made less so by the all-too-real violent stakes involved in maintaining beehive status quo (sacrifices, massacres, the tearing of bee heads from bee bodies). Dystopian fiction so often highlights the human capacity for authoritarianism, but Paull investigates bees' reliance on it: what is a hivemind, after all, if not evolutionarily beneficial thought control? And while Flora 717 may not be the next Katniss Everdeen, she symbolizes the power that knowledge has to engender change, even in nature.
Customer Reviews
Amazing amazing book
The first really gripping book I have read in a while. Fantastic and imaginative story.
it's great!
I have this book In real life and it's very interesting and exciting to read
Fantastic!
I couldn’t put the book down. Really enjoyed reading Bees.
From an old beekeeper. !