The Bees by Laline Paull
340 pages
Published 2014
Read from September 13 to September 16
Rating: ★★★ out of 5
A slight, unobjectionable animal fantasy, brought down considerably by its loose, almost aimless structure. At times Paull is clearly channeling Watership Down, but rather than a structured epic, The Bees is a picaresque narrative, bumbling from one vignette to the next as the viewpoint character, Flora 717, finds herself working or witnessing every possible permutation of life inside and outside the hive, without much purpose beyond "Here are some facts about bees and colony collapse, presented through a talking animal filter." Flora is constantly distracted and sidetracked, corralled into a cleaning job while on her way out to forage just so Paull could depict drones carousing and demanding entertainment, before Flora escapes to forage anyway. Fantasies built upon quasi-realistic depictions of biology are a fine idea, but in a novel, story should always come first; at times during The Bees, I wished I could be watching a bee documentary instead.
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