TIMELESS BOOK YOU MUST READ
Hidden in this dystopian story about a world without bees is a message that, no matter how grim things may be, there is always hope
BRINGING together the vastly contrasting lives of three different people, Maja Lunde has redrawn our world in black and gold.
In The History of Bees, Lunde has brought the three protagonists – William, George and Tao – together with their own children, each of their lives separated by centuries, completely different, and yet so intricately interwoven, each one having a subtle yet permanent impact on the future of these invaluable creatures.
Lunde has not told this story with the ideal of creating utopian heroes, as many writers do, but has created several people, all unmistakably, and sometimes painfully, human.
Fiction is farthest from its definition as possible in this story, bringing up a sadly muchoverlooked topic with these three people and their children.
The History of Bees is an unmistakeable masterpiece and a delight to read, with beautiful execution of suspense and action. Lunde certainly hasn’t shied from giving her characters any and all of the traits that make them seem embarrassing, cruel or unpleasant, but always brings it back that above all, they are brave and determined, always filled with hope till the very end.
William, a botanist and seed merchant of 1852, is undeniably childish and immature in his efforts of creating a scientific breakthrough, studying hard and working with unmoving dedication, though easily knocked down by any obstacle.
Throughout his “quest”, he is completely dependent on his eldest daughter’s support and companionship, though only with eyes for his unmotivated son and previous mentor’s approval.
Eventually, after having just been beaten by another innovator in the race to create the perfect hive, he becomes bedridden.
This is where you truly see his
character. Where at first it may seem that he simply doesn’t care and has given up completely, in actual fact he has poured his whole life and being into his research, and after having been beaten once again, he simply can’t get back up again.
He is weighted with the guilt of realising that he’d never truly given his daughter the appreciation, love, or father she deserved, and feels manipulated into a race he couldn’t win.
Having already given all he has to his work, it is all he can do to drown in his remorse. So his daughter once again rescues him, or at least his work, and moves to America with her older brother’s abandoned son where they continue their family line of becoming beekeepers, all following William Savage’s only slightly unorthodox hive design.
A few generations down the line, George is one of the first beekeepers to be struck by the impending colony collapse disorder, CCD, and with the support of his son keeps on pushing through his bereavement. He fights for hope until there is none to be found and the bees are slowly wiped from the face of the earth.
Lunde has created an absolutely beautiful story about him and his relationships with every character he meets. Sometimes the actions and traits of certain characters in the story can put you off them for a while, but the sense of community and reliance on one another makes one simply fall in love with them. Everyone falls apart and comes together in all their own ways once CCD has swept them off their feet, the well-known and loved phenomenon of hope’s return despite all the grief and pain.
George’s son, a gifted and budding writer, later publishes a book about CCD and his family’s struggle, documenting their journey from William Savage to George Savage, unfalteringly raising awareness of the bees, predicting the ramifications of the human race’s impact on them if nothing is done soon. He has stood up and done something about it, his determined character to push through anything undeniably admirable.
Much later, after the bees’ downfall has been informally dubbed “the Collapse”, people are forced to hand-pollinate their crops, which is when our next main character Tao’s son comes across a wild beehive and is stung, though the fact that it was a bee-sting is kept a closely guarded secret. Devastated, Tao invests all of her time, money and life into finding him when he is taken away for the doctors and scientists to confirm what happened to him. Her search eventually takes her to Beijing, where Lunde’s stunning description of a desolate, broken husk of a place draws you in, set in the knowledge that this is a most assuredly post-apocalyptic world, and one in a future alarmingly easy to imagine may one day be ours.
It gives the constant feeling of dread and mourning of what could have been. Tao wishes she hadn’t been so insistent on going to the orchards rather than the markets that fateful day. The residents refuse to leave their homes and in turn are abandoned to a place as good as forgotten, and everyone, everywhere, wishes that they’d not taken those once countless little bees for granted.
Everyone in this story feels the weight of guilt and blame dragging them down, in every time and place. It’s always the ghost of choices that have an uncertain result, not unlike Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.”
The poem and this story’s correlation – whether intentional or not – is astounding.
Uncertainty looms in the shadow of stubbornness whenever a decision is to be made, though the characters’ choices all lead us to the story’s end, which is in truth, not an end.
The reader is left with the knowledge that as long as you look for it, hope can always be found.