Praise for The Secret Life of Bees: A wonderful book, by turns sad, full of incident and shot through with grown-up magic reminiscent of Joanne Harris * * Daily Telegraph * * Charming, funny, moving and unmistakeably from the American South . . . a story that whips together heat, violence, eccentricity, madness and the Gothic * * The Times * * Moving, original, and accomplished . . . wonderfully written, powerful, poignant, and humorous, and takes a line which is - refreshingly - strongly female without being cliche-feminist. It is also deliciously eccentric, which lifts it out of the usual category of a rite-of-passage novel into the realms of real distinction. Do read it -- JOANNA TROLLOPE Eccentric, inventive, and ultimately forgiving . . . a truly original Southern voice -- ANITA SHREVE Monk Kidd has created a narrative as skilful and sweet as a honeycomb. Uplifting and warm-hearted, this is a moving novel and Lily is a fascinating, funny and clever narrator * * Literary Review * * Lily is a wonderfully petulant and self-absorbed adolescent, and Kidd deftly portrays her sense of injustice as it expands to accomodate broader social evils...August and her sisters, June and May, are no mere vehicles for Lily's salvation; they are individuals as fully imagined as the sweltering, kudzu-carpeted landscape that surrounds them * * New York Times Book Review * * A wonderfully written debut novel * * Kirkus Reviews * *
