A young school boy visiting his aunt's country house finds company and friendship with the gentle beekeeper and begins teaching the man to read, so that it seems nothing can ever intrude upon their closeness. A young country girl fights against becoming a downtrodden domestic skivvy like her dead mother, while another young girl reaches a delicate understanding with an elderly blind man as they walk along the beach together. On another beach a more sinister plot unfolds as a gang of boys plans the most wicked deed. (20030815)
The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper To Read: and Other Stories
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"Hill can evoke a setting, convey the essence of a situation and let one see into the inmost hearts of her character in a paragraph or even a single sentence" (Francis King Spectator )
"Hill's sentences speak eloquently...the pleasure to be had from [these] stories lies in their carefulness: memories are exactly sustained, small gifts are valued, little words are listened to" (Guardian )
"Hill's stories evoke place, situation and complex emotions with enviable economy... Masterly" (Daily Mail )
"Simple and mesmeric prose" (Observer )
"These very strange, beautiful tales demonstrate a relentless capacity to surprise... The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read introduces many individual people who will continue to stare back at the reader long after the book is closed" (Times Literary Supplement )
"Hill's sentences speak eloquently...the pleasure to be had from [these] stories lies in their carefulness: memories are exactly sustained, small gifts are valued, little words are listened to" (Guardian )
"Hill's stories evoke place, situation and complex emotions with enviable economy... Masterly" (Daily Mail )
"Simple and mesmeric prose" (Observer )
"These very strange, beautiful tales demonstrate a relentless capacity to surprise... The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read introduces many individual people who will continue to stare back at the reader long after the book is closed" (Times Literary Supplement )
Book Description
'This is vintage Susan Hill, both in the little worlds she evokes and in her understanding of the relationships between children and adults' Books of the Year, Spectator (20030815)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Many people think short stories are easy to write which is why there are so many indifferent ones around. Others believe than no short story can pack the punch of a novel. This book of nine beautifully crafted examples belies such thinking. The writing is spare but humanity within is rich. Susan Hill's characters are ordinary, unremarkable people but cannot easily be forgotten. A young girl from a circus family shares her sense of loss with a man she despises and through it they come to an understanding. A young boy performs what he sees as the most wicked crime in the world only for it to pass unnoticed and unpunished. Two daughters watch as for once in her life,their mother performs one act of simple kindness, whilst another pair of sisters think they love their father but fail to understand what love really is.
An air of melancholy pervades these stories but they are not depressing. The simple beauty of the writing and the truths they convey lift the spirits rather like a string quartet in the minor key.
24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Like many Susan Hill fans, her bleak and devastatingly heartfelt writing was forced upon me at school. For me though, it wasn't her Somerset Maughan Award-winning novel, I'm the King of the Castle or her chilling ghost story, then long-standing West End play, The Woman in Black. It was a quiet collection of short stories, written in 1973, called A Bit of Singing and Dancing. Despite my reluctance to reading a series of tales about stiff upper-lipped middle-aged and elderly characters I believed I would have nothing in common with, I was instantly lured into the tormented lives of these losers, loners, and misfits, and impassioned by the harsh purity of the stories.
Now, having taken in the highs of Hill's The Woman in Black and The Mist in the Mirror, and the lows of the frankly dull, The Service of Clouds and Mrs de Winter (her ill-advised sequel to du Maurier's Rebecca) I feel that we have come full circle, with The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read, another small selection of short stories about loners, losers, and misfits.
Of the nine tales in this collection there are Hill's tried and tested themes of bereavement, loneliness, disfigurement and the lurch between childhood and adulthood, are played out against the backdrop of remote rural communities, bleak unnamed towns, or off-season seaside resorts. Father, Father is about two adult sisters trying to come to terms with their father's new companion after their mother's death. Sand is about a random act of kindness that a girl's brutal mother carries out for a stranger. In The Punishment two young boys try to think of the most dreadful crime, only for no one to notice when they finally carry it out. It is this theme that threads through many of the stories: the numbling disappointment we feel when things don't quite work out, the pent-up frustration that makes us want to scream but we keep bottled up because we're so terribly, terribly British. The most heartwrenching example is the titular story, the ending of which is so devastating in its anti-climax, it is reminscent of William Trevor at his most finest.
She doesn't tick every box though. Some of the stories are so subtle they simply petter out, and Antonyin's, the only tale not set in England, is a bum note at the end of the collection with a final twist that is - well - quite frankly, naff. The descriptions - though mostly beautifully imaginative - are sometimes too simplistic, jarring with the more elegant prose. With this in mind, I found the collection a little disappointing in comparison to A Bit of Singing and Dancing. However, Susan Hill is still a remarkable storyteller, delving into the psyche of everyday people and plucking out inner demons for us all to see, and sympathise with. With literary-lovers bemoaning the death of the short story, it is good to see that in Susan Hill's hands, there is life in the genre yet.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By PenFriend
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I expected much after reading the title story, which is poignant and interesting, but was disappointed by the rather samey themes of subsequent stories. Thereafter, tyrannical mother figures abounded, cruel losses and nasty life lessons repeated like a badly warmed potato.
The style was highly reminiscent of William Trevor, whom I generally find bleak and somewhat unpleasant. There was even a blind piano tuner trapped in a miserable relationship, except he was a blind storeman in Hill's version.
On the whole, Hill is more delicate than Trevor who seems to revel in life's petty cruelties.
The last story is Chekovian as the first
'Antonyin's.': An Englishman is happily entombed in a cold Eastern European peasant-zone and becomes entrapped by an ugly and boring woman determined that he should marry her.
My only question was- why does Hill keep saying he is happy in the first place? Despite boils, indigestion and turnip-smells? His female pursuer seems like an animated turnip herself, a Breughelesque manifestation of the freezing landscape and the revolting food she cooks.
Anyway, no spoilers, it has an interesting denoument.( No, he doesn't make mad passionate mashed turnip with her).
On the whole, this collection is worth reading, but lacks a defined style or voice, all the voices seem borrowed.
But isn't this Hill's forte?
She can out-19th Century Wilkie Collins and Henry James.....
Spooky.
The style was highly reminiscent of William Trevor, whom I generally find bleak and somewhat unpleasant. There was even a blind piano tuner trapped in a miserable relationship, except he was a blind storeman in Hill's version.
On the whole, Hill is more delicate than Trevor who seems to revel in life's petty cruelties.
The last story is Chekovian as the first
'Antonyin's.': An Englishman is happily entombed in a cold Eastern European peasant-zone and becomes entrapped by an ugly and boring woman determined that he should marry her.
My only question was- why does Hill keep saying he is happy in the first place? Despite boils, indigestion and turnip-smells? His female pursuer seems like an animated turnip herself, a Breughelesque manifestation of the freezing landscape and the revolting food she cooks.
Anyway, no spoilers, it has an interesting denoument.( No, he doesn't make mad passionate mashed turnip with her).
On the whole, this collection is worth reading, but lacks a defined style or voice, all the voices seem borrowed.
But isn't this Hill's forte?
She can out-19th Century Wilkie Collins and Henry James.....
Spooky.
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Some Great Short Tales, Some Not So
If I were to go with an overall theme of `The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper to Read' it would be death and loss. This therefore gives the whole book a rather melancholic tone. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Simon Savidge Reads
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Print Size
Purchased this book for a person who has sight problems under the impression it was large print, but this does not appear to be the case!! Read more
Published on 23 Dec 2009 by Sc Garrett
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