THE BEEKEEPER’S PUPIL

Name: THE BEEKEEPER’S PUPIL
Author: Sara George
ISBN: 0-7472-7041-4

by Sara George ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 15, 2003

Thoughtful, beautifully written, and wonderfully tender toward its appealing characters: another impressive achievement for...

bookshelf

The author of The Journal of Mrs. Pepys (1999) again offers a vividly wrought fictional memoir by the unsung amanuensis of a real-life figure.

François Burnens goes to work in the summer of 1785 for M. François Huber, a gentleman living outside Geneva. Monsieur, as Burnens refers to him, has been blind since he was 19; he hires François to assist him in his study of bees, as well as such mundane tasks as shaving. Spanning ten years, Burnens’s leisurely first-person narrative reveals its author as an intelligent, observant youth and his employer as a warmhearted, reflective man who has forged the agony of affliction into hard-won serenity. We see through Burnens’s eyes that the Hubers’ profoundly loving marriage has its frustrations for the blind man’s wife; occasional lapses when the manservant forgets himself and refers to Madame as Marie-Aimée reveal an increasingly insistent attraction between them. There’s no melodrama, however, only the delicately described relations of decent people striving for fulfillment within the bounds of duty and honor. The Hubers’ other servants and their son Pierre are as fully imagined as the three principals, and the two men’s work with bees is as fascinating as the household interactions. George subtly uses their scientific efforts to show Monsieur imparting life lessons about patience and meticulousness to the young manservant, promoted to secretary after his careful reflections prove as invaluable as his eyes. “God bless your vision, Burnens,” Monsieur exclaims when they make a crucial discovery about how the queen bee mates. “Mine is only the sight, sir,” he replies, “yours is the vision.” Yet over the years Burnens’s sentiments of affection and obligation are challenged by a growing desire to find work, a wife, and a home of his own. The time comes for him to leave, with Monsieur’s gracious yet sorrowful blessing. It’s a mark of how sensitively George has shaped her tale that this inevitable denouement leaves us both saddened and exultant.

Thoughtful, beautifully written, and wonderfully tender toward its appealing characters: another impressive achievement for George.

Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2003

ISBN: 0-7472-7041-4

Page Count: 314

Publisher: Headline

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

bookshelf

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

- SEEN & HEARD
The Snowy Day Is NYC Library’s Most Popular Book

- SEEN & HEARD
ALA Releases List of 2020’s Most Challenged Books

- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

bookshelf

THE ALCHEMIST

by Paulo Coelho & translated by Margaret Jull Costa ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 1993

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.

bookshelf

Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.

The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.

Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.