The Secret Life of Bees: A Novel Audiobook

Quotes

• “Sue Monk Kidd’s eccentric, inventive, and ultimately forgiving novel is reminiscent of the work of Reynolds Price in its ability to create a truly original Southern voice.”

  — Anita Shreve, #1 New York Times bestselling author

• “This is the story of a young girl’s journey toward healing, and of finding, at its end, not only wholeness but the intrinsic sacredness of living in the world. I think it is simply wonderful.”

  — Anne Rivers Siddons, New York Times bestselling author

• “With imagination as lush and colorful as the American South, a clutch of deliciously eccentric characters, and vivid prose, Sue Monk Kidd creates a rich, maternal haven in a harsh world.”

  — Christina Schwarz, #1 New York Times bestselling author

• “What a splendid novel! It’s wonderfully thoughtful and sensitive and compulsively readable.”

  — Susan Isaacs, New York Times bestselling author

• “I am amazed that this moving, original, and accomplished book is a first novel. It is 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, #1 internationally bestselling author

• “The Secret Life of Bees is a novel of love and almost unbelievable courage, the quest of one young girl in search of her mother and so much more. Sue Monk Kidd takes on huge things, and by writing about what is mysterious, even difficult, in life, illuminates what is beautiful. She proves that a family can be found where you least expect it—maybe not under your own roof but in that magical place where you find love. The Secret Life of Bees is a gift, filled with hope.”

  — Luanne Rice, New York Times bestselling author

• “Sue Monk Kidd has written a wonderful novel about mothers and daughters and the transcendent power of love, all the while masterfully illuminating the feminine face of God.”

  — Connie May Fowler, American novelist, essayist, memoirist, screenwriter, and poet

• “Honey-sweet but never cloying, this debut by nonfiction author Kidd features a hive’s worth of appealing female characters, an offbeat plot, and a lovely style.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily’s story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd’s debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic.”

  — Amazon.com, editorial review

• “An uplifting story.”

  — Booklist

• “There is a wonderful sense of the strength of female friendship and love throughout the story.”

  — School Library Journal

• “[A] sweeping debut novel…The stunning metaphors and realistic characters are so poignant that they will bring tears to your eyes.”

  — Library Journal

• “A wonderfully written debut that rather scants its subject of loss and discovery—a young girl searching for the truth about her dead mother—in favor of a feminist fable celebrating the company of women and the ties between that mothers and daughters. The prose is lapidary, the characters diverse, and the story unusual.”

  — Kirkus Reviews

• “Writing with the intimate voice of the memoirist and with the Southerner’s abiding sense of place, Sue Monk Kidd has written a forgiving story for the motherless child in all of us.”

  — Shelby Hearon, award-winning author

• “Sue Monk Kidd is an extraordinary storyteller. In The Secret Life of Bees, she explores a young girl’s search for the truth about her mother; her courage to tear down racial barriers; and her joy as she claims her place within a community of women. Beautifully written.”

  — Ursula Hegi, author of The Vision of Emma Blau