one down

Finished up my first selection, The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, from Southern Reading Challenge. I feel somewhat silly even writing about it, because I'm fairly certain there's probably only 2 or 3 people left out there who haven't already read it. I can say that I sure wish someone had given me a swift kick in the behind and told me to read it sooner! A enormously huge "THANK YOU" goes out to Maggie for hosting this challenge, because I fear without it I might never have gotten around to reading this gem of a book.

I probably should go back and quote Maggie directly, because she stated it far more eloquently than I'm about to paraphrase it...but in general, one of the things she wanted us to get out of this challenge was a sense of place and time and way of living in the South. You simply could not miss the "Southern-ness" of The Secret Life of Bees. Sue Monk Kidd had a way of dropping you right into South Carolina in the 1960s. As goes with any time in history or any place in the world, not everything about South Carolina in this turbulent time was enviable or admirable. Yet the charm of the wonderful Southern ladies is immense. It seems silly to fall in love with fictional characters, but it was impossible not to! I was blessed to grow up with a truly wonderful mother, and yet I couldn't help but wish that August was a part of my life.

I stuck little markers in the book as I read to help me recall some of the wonderful passages...

***"Where do you come from?" he asked me. This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the same Baptist church as our ex-boss. We are looking for ways our stories fit together. It was rare, though, for Negroes to ask white people where they're from, because there was nothing much to gained from it, as their stories weren't likely to link up.***
(This passage got me to wondering if this is true of all of the South. When we lived in TN for 11 years, I didn't find it to be true. But I suspect that might be because we were so obviously Yankees, that no one wasted their time with that question. Instead, overwhelmingly the most common question we got upon first meeting someone, was "What church do you go to?")

There were countless passages that allowed me to daydream that I was right there in beautiful South Carolina with Lily and Rosaleen...

***We waded through Queen Anne's lace and thick-stalked purple flowers, into dragonflies and the smell of Carolina jasmine so thick I could almost see it circling in the air like golden smoke.***

***Sunset is the saddest light there is. We rode a long time in the glow of it, everything silent except for the crickets and the frogs who were revving up for twilight. I stared through the windshield as the burned lights took over the sky.***

***We drifted by gray barns, cornfields in need of irrigation, and clumps of Hereford cows, chewing in slow motion, looking very content with their lives. Squinting into the distance, I could see farmhouses with wide porches and tractor-tire swings suspended from ropes on nearby tree branches; windmills sprouted up beside them, their giant silver petals creaking a little when the breezes rose. The sun had baked everything to perfection; even the gooseberries on the fence had fried to raisins.***

I could literally go on for hours quoting beautiful passages from this extraordinary book. This was not a book that made me laugh out loud, yet I couldn't begin to count the number of times I found myself with a smile on my face. And yes, there were a few tears as well. It's not often that I stumble upon a book that I fall so deeply in love with...