The Bees by Laline Paull

When I first heard about The Bees by Laline Paull, I was skeptical, but then I remembered the same skepticism I had when I heard about The Wild Trees by Richard Preston.  Trees affected me deeply, and completely changed the way I look at trees.  A slight buzz drifted through journals and newspapers about the novel, so I decided to plunge in and see for myself.  One of the things that drove me to this decision were the three excellent blurbs on the cover by Margaret Atwood, Emma Donoghue, and Madeline Miller.  I have read all three of these authors, and I trust their judgment. 

Debut novels almost always throw up a red flag, but I believe this is one of the best I have seen in a long time.  The author’s note on the jacket flap is sparse.  She studied English at Oxford, screenwriting in Los Angeles, and theater in London.  She lives in England with her photographer husband and their three children.

The novel tells the story of Flora 717, a “sanitation worker” in a hive, set in the English countryside.  The hive runs under a strict hierarchy: the Queen – referred to as the “holy mother” – then “princesses” referred to as the “Sage Class,” then forager bees, drones (males who live off the hive, but die when they first mate with a queen).  Flora has aspirations of a higher status, but breaking into that 1% at the top of the hive is nigh near impossible.

The bees have an intricate system of communication involving the smells they leave behind and follow home.  The have elaborate dances to transfer the knowledge of blooming flowers to the other foragers.  I recall writing a paper about "The Dance Language of Honey Bees" when I was in high school.  They also communicate telepathically through their antennae about their hopes, fears, and sins.

The novel is heavily allegorical with many references to “Holy Mother,” “Devotion meetings” when the hive gathers to experience the love of the mother.  A constant chant among the bees is “Accept, Obey, Serve.”  They pray for the mother to lay healthy eggs, chanting “Hallowed be thy womb” (75).  The hive really rises to the level of a cult.

Paull writes, “conversations always concluded with the acknowledgement that Her Majesty continued to lay at magnificent speed and volume and was more beautiful than ever, and as she was the mightiest force in the universe, this rain must be a sign of her displeasure, and so they must all work harder.  Accept, Obey, and Serve” (137). 

After a forbidden dalliance with a drone, which may have been non-consensual, Flora finds herself about to lay an egg.  Only the queen may breed, and the penalty for Flora would be death.  But a “visitation” occurs, when a beekeeper removes part of the comb, and Flora’s egg is destroyed.

I will never look at bees, bee hives, and honey the same way again.  Laline Paull’s splendid novel, The Bees, is a most entertaining read, and I gladly give it 5 stars

--Chiron, 6/30/14

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

As we pass another vernal equinox in March of 2013, my mind wandered back to 1965 when I read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. This classic work, which became, in the words of Peter Matthiessen, “The cornerstone of the new environmentalism” has writing as beautiful as a perfect Spring day.

Carson was born in 1907 and served many years as a marine biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Three previous works on the environment of the oceans firmly fixed her as an eminent writer on nature. She died less than two years after the publication of Silent Spring. Her work set in motion profound changes in environmental laws to protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land on which we live and grow our food.

Carson’s study focuses on the indiscriminate use of the pesticide DDT, which was banned shortly after the book caused a world-wide sensation. Predictably, much opposition arose from opponents of the idea we need to protect our environment. Detractors in government and the then multi-million dollar chemical industry attacked Carson, because – as Linda Lear who wrote a biography of Carson wrote in the Introduction to my anniversary edition – they “were not about to allow a former government editor, a female scientist without a Ph.D. or an institutional affiliation, known only for her lyrical books on the sea, to undermine public confidence in its products or to question its integrity” (xvii). Those chemical companies now have profits in the billions. Lear continues, when this book “caught the attention of President Kennedy, federal and state investigations were launched into the validity of Carson’s claims” (xvii).

The chapters then focus on various parts of the environment, the chemicals which were sprayed or dumped into each one, and the effects these chemicals had. The title “Silent Spring” reflects numerous reports of the death of thousands of song birds and other creatures following widespread use of DDT and other pesticides. I remember as a child watching trucks drive down our street spraying a white fog to kill mosquitoes. Sometimes the city issued warnings and other times not. My mother always made my sisters and me stay inside “until the smell went away.” However, I remember seeing children running and playing in the fog.




Carson writes about the hundreds of new chemicals which find their way into use every year. In the mid-40s alone “over 200 chemicals were invented to kill insects, weeds, rodents, and other organisms described in the modern vernacular as ‘pests’” (7). Carson asks, “Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called ‘insecticides,’ but ‘biocides’” (8). Yet today, attacks continue on the EPA. Silent Spring is a most worthy read for anyone concerned about the environment. 5 stars

--Chiron, 2/15/13

The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant

This recently published work of non-fiction has elements of history, the politics of the cold war, ecology, biology, and botany all while spinning a terrific adventure story. None of this, however, gets bogged down in a morass of technical jargon, but the reader does become immersed in the mysterious and magical world of the “taiga” -- which is Russian for forest. This vast tract of evergreens has the distinction of being the largest biome in the world. It stretches across Eurasia and North America. The winters in the Russian portion drop as low as -60 degrees below zero. The summers are warm, rainy, and humid, with temperatures rising as high as 70 degrees. An enormous variety of insects invade the taiga in the summer, followed by a wide variety of birds to eat them. No roads, no buildings, no power lines – virtually nothing mars the landscape

The taiga also provides a home to wolverines, mink, sable, the lynx, and what most people know as the Siberian tiger, however, the “Amir” tiger is the correct name. The males frequently hover near 800 pounds, and 500 to 600 pound females commonly stalk this enormous forest.

John Vaillant, a writer frequently found in the pages of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and National Geographic, builds his tale around a hunter in the taiga, Vladimir Markov and Yuri Trush, the squad leader of a SWAT team known as “Inspection Tiger.” This unit has the responsibility of dealing with crimes in the forest. Sometimes those crimes involve tigers – either because of poaching or attacks by tigers on humans in and around the edges of the taiga.

As the story opens, several friends of Markov find his remains in the forest. No doubt exists in their minds that he has fallen victim to a huge tiger. In fact, some of these tough, hard-bitten men, who live a life just barely out of the stone age, become physically sick at what they saw. They file a report with the local authorities, and Yuri Trush, part hunter, part policeman, part special forces soldier begins an investigation.

He assembles details of the last few days of Markov’s life by considering anecdotes from local hunters, loggers, and poachers, and most importantly, by tracking the tiger from the scene of the attack. Vaillant describes a tiger attack this way: “The impact…can be compared to that of a piano falling on you from a second story window. But unlike the piano, the tiger is designed to do this, and the impact is only the beginning” (270).



Some elements of the story stretch believability to extremes, but the stories of the men who know the taiga, the physical evidence, and historical records about the tigers, make for an interesting, fascinating, and exciting story. Vaillant does spend some time on the political and historical background of his unit and the taiga, but it did help my understanding of this wild and forbidding place. The last few chapters have a level of excitement far above anything I have read in a long, long time.

This story fascinated me from the moment I heard the author interview on NPR. The subtitle says all I needed to know: “A True Story of Vengeance and Survival.” 5 stars

--Chiron, 7/30/11

Blind Descent by James M. Tabor

I heard about this book on NPR, and it sounded like another Wild Trees by Robert Preston (see my review here), but it did have a few differences. Tabor has an interesting subject about a place and activity I could never hope or want to experience. With my fear of heights and tight spaces, extreme cave diving and giant redwood climbing are definitely not for me.

Blind Descent tells the story of two teams of cave explorers searching for the deepest cave on earth. Tabor reminds us that the tallest mountains, both poles, and the deepest depths of the ocean have been explored, while the subterranean world presents an “eighth continent,” which remains virtually unexamined. He compares “cave divers” to all these great adventurers – Scott, Amundsen, Neil Armstrong, Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay.

The American team, led by Bill Stone, explores Cheve Cave in Mexico, while a Russian team, led by Alexander Klimchouk, tackles Krubera on the Arabika Mastiff in Georgia, the former Soviet Republic. These two men have diametrically opposite personalities, and both teams believe their respective caves are the deepest. The story starts slowly – spending a bit too many pages on the personality and relationships of Bill Stone, to my mind – but it does pick up once we get past all the quirks of the two team leaders.

These men and women face incredible obstacles – raging waters, strange microbes, falling rocks, water-filled “sumps” (flooded tunnels), and darkness for weeks at a time. Also, even minor injuries often prove fatal, because it might take days to return to the cave entrance. Furthermore, these two caves were in remote areas, so help was not nearby. Even if a rescue could be attempted, stretchers carrying injured cavers often don’t fit through small spaces and cracks in the cave walls.

James Tabor is not Robert Preston, who has experience writing for The New Yorker. This interesting story could benefit from some detailed drawings of some of the equipment they used to descend into these “super caves.” Preston supplies a few drawings of the giant trees.

The idea of climbing mountains and diving these dangerous caves might appeal to some – but most definitely not me. The great mountaineer George Leigh Mallory said he climbed, “Because it’s there.” He attempted to scale Mt. Everest three times, and may or may not have reached the summit in 1924. He never came back from that attempt. I do not understand this sentiment, but thanks to Preston and Tabor, readers – even timid ones like me! -- can vicariously experience these great adventures. (4-1/2 stars)

--Chiron, 9/17/10

The Tree Where Man Was Born by Peter Matthiessen

In September of 1972, this work was serialized in The New Yorker magazine over three issues. Only a few years before, I had discovered what some have described as the best magazine in America. The story of the peoples and the vast herds of animals in the Serengeti fascinated me and cemented forever my love of TNY. Many memories of the images from this sprawling narrative persist 35 years later.

This volume is quite a bit longer than the original article. The early chapters describe Matthiessen’s journey to the interior, along with the patchwork groups of peoples spread over millions of square miles around Lake Victoria, the Rift Valley (of Louis, Mary, and Richard Leakey fame). The author includes long sections stretching back to the origins of colonial East Africa and forward into some of the chaos and lawlessness of the end of the colonial period. His narrative captures the rhythm and flow of life on this exotic continent.

The braided histories of many tribes, clans, customs, beliefs, lifestyles, and feuds among neighbors, can be a bit confusing, but the prose is so lyrical and vivid, I never really minded the extra effort to stay with Matthiessen as he bounced over rugged, arid landscapes in his beat up Land Rover. I wanted to own a Land Rover after reading this absorbing story. Take this example from chapter two:

“Our camp was in the mountain forest, a true forest of great holy trees – the African olive, with its silver gray-green shimmering leaves and hoary twisted trunk – of wild flowers and shafts of light, cool shadows and deep humus smells, moss, ferns, glades, and the ring of unseen birds from the green clerestories. Lying back against one tree, staring up into another, I could watch the olive pigeon and the olive thrush share the black fruit for which neither bird is named; to a forest stream nearby came the paradise fly-catcher, perhaps the most striking of all birds in East Africa. Few forests are so beautiful, so silent, and here the silence is intensified by the apprehended presence of wild beasts – buffalo and elephant, rhino, lion, leopard. Because these creatures are so scarce and shy, the forest paths can be walked in peace; the only fierce animal I saw was a small squirrel pinned to a dead log by a shaft of sun, feet wide, defiant, twitching its tail in time to thin pure squeaking.” (79-80)

Wow. Prose like that rarely appears these days. Even at 400 pages, Matthiessen’s story flows quickly, but languidly through the forest. The best parts, however, involve his descriptions of the Maasai of East Africa, which most interested me then and now.

Admittedly, Matthiessen’s prose requires gaining a level of comfort. Many of the long, rambling sentences could benefit from a few more judiciously placed commas! But in the end, the journey is well worth the effort. 5 stars

--Chiron, 4/7/09

Falcons of North America by Kate Davis

I met the publisher of this book at the Mid-Winter American Library Association Convention in Denver, Colorado. Since back-yard bird feeding and watching is a hobby of mine, I was curious about this book. I did not expect to see any falcons in my home town, but I recognized the bird on the cover – an American Kestral. The section devoted to Kestrals showed me a bird I had observed in my backyard but could not find in any of my bird books.

The illustrations are colorful and plentiful. The book contains a lot of technical information about these raptors, but the bulk of the book remains accessible to an amateur birder like myself. Wonderful! 5 stars.

--Chiron, 2/12/09

Cry of the Kalahari by Mark & Delia Owens

I first read this book nearly 25 years ago when first published in paperback. The story has not aged and still enthralls. Two young American graduate students sell everything they own to purchase a round-trip ticket to South Africa. They board the plane with about $6,000, and buy train tickets in Johannesburg for Gaberone, Botswana. Arriving there, they burn through quite a bit of their money waiting for permits to study the wildlife on a game preserve. A few months later, they buy what supplies they can, including a beat up Land Rover, and set off for the Kalahari Desert with the idea of finding some unstudied animal life. No experience in the desert and nothing more to guide them than their love and enthusiasm for wildlife speak of tremendous courage and dedication.

When their adventure began, in the middle 70s, they had great respect for the animals and the environment. They carefully observed lions, leopards, jackals, and brown hyenas, along with the myriad ungulates, birds, rodents, reptiles, and insects, while trying not to intrude or disturb them in the least.

The area of the desert they chose had never been visited by humans. They made friends with lions and much of the other wild life they encountered. At first, surrounded by a pride of curious lions, Mark and Delia, seem scared but calm. Gradually, the lions accepted them as part of the landscape. Numerous photos depict the close contact between the Owens and the big cats, as well as hyenas, which became one of the principle foci of their work.

The couple shared the writing of the book, and the chapters written by Delia display a somewhat more technical style, while those by Mark are more concerned with observing the landscape, the wildlife, and the climate.

Today the couple runs the Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation based in Stone Mountain, GA. Their website is http://www.owens-foundation.org/ . Donations are welcome. Their story tells of the struggle for preservation of the predators of the Kalahari, as well as a constant struggle for funding to continue their work.

If you love animals, adventure, courage, with funny moments mixed in, this book is a must-read. Five stars.

--Chiron, 2/10/09