Lost in the beehive A novel

Michele Young-Stone

Book - 2018

"From the author of Above Us Only Sky and The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, a touching new novel set in the 1960s about the power of friendship, love, and accepting your past in order to find a future. For nearly her entire life, Gloria Ricci has been followed by bees. They're there when her mother loses twin children; when she first meets a neighborhood girl named Isabel, who brings out feelings in her that she knows she shouldn't have; and when her parents, desperate to "help" her, bring her to the Belmont Institute, whose glossy brochures promise healing and peace. She tells no one, but their hum follows her as she struggles to survive against the Institute's cold and damaging methods, as she meet...s an outspoken and unapologetic fellow patient named Sheffield Schoeffler, and as they run away, toward the freewheeling and accepting glow of 1960s Greenwich Village, where they create their own kind of family among the artists and wanderers who frequent the jazz bars and side streets. As Gloria tries to outrun her past, experiencing profound love--and loss--and encountering a host of unlikely characters, including her Uncle Eddie, a hard-drinking former boyfriend of her mother's, to Madame Zelda, a Coney Island fortune teller, and Jacob, the man she eventually marries but whose dark side threatens to bring disaster, the bees remain. It's only when she needs them most that Gloria discovers why they're there. Moving from the suburbs of New Jersey to the streets of New York to the swamps of North Carolina and back again, Lost in the Beehive is a poignant novel about the moments that teach us, the places that shape us, and the people who change us"--

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Subjects
Genres
Bildungsromans
Romance fiction
Published
New York, NY : Simon & Schuster Paperbacks 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Michele Young-Stone (author)
Edition
First Simon & Schuster trade paperback edition
Physical Description
298 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN
9781451657647
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Like the characters in Young-Stone's previous novels, most recently Above Us Only Sky (2015), the heroine of her third outing has a unique connection to nature: Gloria Ricci is followed by a persistent swarm of bees, though no one else is aware of them. Coming of age in New Jersey in the 1960s, Gloria is caught in a tryst with a female friend and sent away to an institute to reform her sexuality. There she meets vibrant Sheffield Schoeffler, who convinces her to join him in New York City once they both escape the institute. But when Gloria eventually joins him there, she finds that the extreme experiments he was subjected to have taken a terrible toll. After tragedy strikes, Gloria returns home and gives in to the advances of a young drifter named Jacob, hoping she can escape her own desires and live a conventional life. As the years go by, she chafes under the confines of her destructive marriage, finally realizing what the bees signify and why she can no longer hide from who she is. Young-Stone has spun a romantic and magical yarn.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

At age seven, Gloria Ricci, the resilient narrator of Young-Stone's emotionally rewarding third novel (after 2015's Above Us Only Sky), is stung by a bee when she finds out her twin brothers didn't survive their premature birth, and the bees continue to appear at pivotal points, providing a strangely reassuring constant in a life frequently touched by tragedy. In 1965, at age 16, a doomed romance with a girl named Isabel lands her at the Belmont Institute, where doctors plan to "cure" her homosexuality. It's there that she forms a deep attachment to Sheffield Schoeffler, a young gay man whose pain mirrors her own. After her release, Gloria runs away to New York to live with Sheffield, but she's devastated when he commits suicide. Years later, she marries the seemingly kind Jacob Blount, moves to rural North Carolina, and endures years of mental and physical abuse at Jacob's hands. When Gloria befriends the kind, beautiful Betty Jenkins, a local bakery owner, she is enamored, and her quiet desperation becomes quiet agony. Young-Stone addresses themes like self-acceptance and domestic abuse, adding a touch of magic realism. Readers' hearts will ache for Gloria as she strives for courage, self-realization, and, ultimately, the freedom to love and be loved. Agent: Michelle Brower, Folio Literary Management. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A slightly surreal novel about a young woman reckoning with her buried identity.Every significant moment of Gloria Ricci's life is accompanied by bees: she is stung when her mother loses twin boys and is plunged into a depression, when she marries a man after knowing him only 10 weeks, when that man almost beats her to death. Not only are the bees an alert when something is horribly wrong, they are her connection to her deceased best friend, Sheffield Schoeffler. Gloria and Sheff meet at the Belmont Institute, where they have been sent to be "cured" of their homosexuality, to be "[made] like everybody else." There, they are mistreated and tormented, permanently damaged. After their respective releases, they meet in New York, where Sheff turns tricks for money and becomes increasingly unhinged. One day, they meet Madame Zelda, a Coney Island fortuneteller who tells Gloria why the bees materialize; Zelda reappears often throughout the novel in moments of distress, and Gloria even names her daughter for the fortuneteller. To live her life after Sheff's death, Gloria dissociates; she makes the choices she thinks she's supposed to and carries on repressing her identity until she can no longer stand it. This novel is somewhat banal, even despite the supernatural tilt. Yet while the prose rings hollow, Young-Stone's (Above Us Only Sky, 2015) message is a strong one: do not deny your self.At its heart, this is a meandering, mystical love story. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Lost in the Beehive 1 ONE OF US WAS GOING to die. I watched the bees fly erratically along the ceiling. They hovered where the plaster hung in sheets. He was bearing down, his thighs straddling my waist, his hands at my throat, the back of my head pounding the bathroom tile. I heard Zelda scream, "Mommy!" but I couldn't answer. I heard the hum of bees, the noise growing louder. I squirmed and kicked as he bore down. With my left hand, I dug at the cracked tile, feeling for a shard, something to fight back. Zelda shouted, "Get off Mommy!" The bees swarmed above his head while I clawed the floor. I felt a piece break free in my hand, my head whacking the floor once more, the light disappearing, something warm on my cheek. The black-and-white basket-weave tiles were cracking open, and I was falling between them. Then, I heard a familiar voice, one I hadn't heard since I was just a kid. It was my very own Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn't grow up. He said, "I've got you, Gloria. I've always got you." Excerpted from Lost in the Beehive: A Novel by Michele Young-Stone All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.