“Fascinating… engrossing… Paull’s clear fascination with her source material brings humanity and warmth to a depiction of the remarkable social world of bees, which is no small achievement.” — —Huffington Post
“The Bees is an extraordinary feat of imagination, conjuring the life of a beehive in gripping, passionate and brilliant detail. With every page I turned, I found myself drawn deeper into Flora’s plight and her immersive, mesmerizing world.” — —Madeline Miller, bestselling author of The Song of Achilles —Madeline Miller, bestselling author of The Song of Achilles
“This is a rich, strange book...convincing in its portrayal of the mind-set of a bee and a hive. I finished it feeling I knew...how bees think and live. This is what sets us humans apart—our imagination can...create a complete, believable world so different from our own.” — —Tracy Chevalier, New York Times bestselling author of Girl With a Pearl Earring
“Told with rapturously attentive imagination...Few novels create such a singular reading experience.” — —The New York Times Book Review
“Riveting… evocative and beautiful.” — —NPR
“Richly imagined” — —Los Angeles Times
“[A] gripping Cinderella/Arthurian tale with lush Keatsian adjectives.” — —Margaret Atwood, via Twitter
“THE BEES is one wild ride. A sensual, visceral mini-epic about timeless rituals and modern environmental disaster. Paull’s heart pounding novel wrenches us into a new world.” — —Emma Donoghue, The New York Times bestselling author of Room
“It quickly became clear that in its basic facts, the novel sticks closely to real-world apian biology and behavior. That is fascinating enough, but Paull deftly wields this information to create an even more elaborately layered culture of beeness…Beautiful.” — Washington Post
“Brilliantly imagined…Paull’s use of human language to describe this tiny, intricate world is classic storytelling at its finest…The Bees boasts a refreshingly feminist spin on fairy tale-style plots….A wildly creative book that resonates deeply for quite a long time. — Austin Chronicle
“It’s rare to come across a book as mind-blowingly imaginative as Laline Paull’s The Bees. It’s even more rare for such works to be successful, well-written, gripping stories...The Bees is an utterly memorable wonder of a novel.” — Kirkus Reviews
“A marvelous work of fiction… The parallels to “1984” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” are numerous but this story is also its own.” — Florida Times-Union