Helpful Score: 3
This was a great book. Once I started it, I could hardly put it down. A young girl befriends an elderly man and learns from him. I would be interested in reading more by this author because I really enjoyed this one.
Helpful Score: 3
excellent story. the best book i've read in the past year. the author does a wonderful job - you have empathy for the characters, yet do not feel sorry for them.
Helpful Score: 3
I loved this book! If you liked "The Secret Life of Bees" you need to read this book. Eva, a young girl who has lost her father moves to the country because her mother thinks it will be good for Eva to be away from the city and the memories of her father's death. Having no friends and a mother that is at work most of the day, Eva wanders the country side on her bike and finds a table with jars of honey being sold on the honor system. She becomes facinated by the honey and soon finds the bee hives and developes a freindship with Burl, a lonely bee keeper. Seeing the world through Eva's eyes makes for a good read and an interesting insite into the story as well.
Helpful Score: 2
Great read, similar to The Secret Life of Bees. A story about growing up, family, and adolesence.
Helpful Score: 1
I really enjoyed this book. I appreciated the perspective of eleven-year-old narrator Eva as she faced a huge change in her life. I also liked that it wasn't a tired and over-used topic.
Helpful Score: 1
wonderful book, told through the eyes of the beekeeper, the young girl and her mom. each had a story about life, relationships and how we connect to others.
Helpful Score: 1
I loved this book. Read it in maybe 2 nights. Very absorbing and relateable.
The Honey Thief presents a coming of age story of a girl, Eva, on the cusp of adolescence who has recently moved to the New York countryside from the city, in a desperate attempt by her widowed mother to escape a troubling past. The immediate impetus for the move is Eva's series of compulsive thefts. Her mother, Miriam, moves Eva out of the city in an attempt to stop the behavior. For Miriam Eva stealing is much more troubling than just adolescent misbehavior. Why that is is related throughout the book in a series of flashbacks, that tell the story of Eva's parents early relationship and their marriage, before Eva's father's death, several years after her birth. Yet, the country does little to help Eva, and, if anything, her problems worsen. The one mitigating factor for Eva seems to be her introduction to a local beekeeper, who invites Eva to watch and learn about his bees. But through a series of chance encounters the one stable and satisfying part of Eva's life will be endangered too.
Eva's story is an interesting one, and the relationship she develops with Burl the beekeeper is an interesting and nuanced one that Graver develops with skill. Ultimately I found the end of this book much less satisfying than the first 3/4 of the text. The ending was a surprise, but unsatisfying. It's difficult to explain why without giving away the ending, but suffice it to say that I found there to be little resolution for the most sympathetic and interesting character in the book. But up until the end the rest of the text was engaging, full of complicated characters and problems. Eva's family is one in which all members are burdened, both by the past and by illness, and much of Eva and Miriam's tell is really an attempt to deal with these problems. Graver is a good writer, I simply wished she'd handled the ending with more complexity.
Eva's story is an interesting one, and the relationship she develops with Burl the beekeeper is an interesting and nuanced one that Graver develops with skill. Ultimately I found the end of this book much less satisfying than the first 3/4 of the text. The ending was a surprise, but unsatisfying. It's difficult to explain why without giving away the ending, but suffice it to say that I found there to be little resolution for the most sympathetic and interesting character in the book. But up until the end the rest of the text was engaging, full of complicated characters and problems. Eva's family is one in which all members are burdened, both by the past and by illness, and much of Eva and Miriam's tell is really an attempt to deal with these problems. Graver is a good writer, I simply wished she'd handled the ending with more complexity.
Enjoyed meeting all the characters and seeing their flaws. I really felt for them when they perpetuated their own misery by not following their hearts. Good, entertaining story, easy to follow and enjoy. Graver really created people that were easy to believe and care about.
The Honey Thief reveals the healing power of friendship and the unbreakable bond between mother and child.
I didn't find the characters very sympathetic, but the book was well written.
Very good story
"A haunting novel about the intricate workings of memory and desire." THis novel "reveals the healing power of friendship and teh ineradicable bonds between mother and child..."
