ShortBookandScribes #BookReview – Here is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan

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Today I’m sharing my thoughts about Here is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan. My thanks to the team at Bloomsbury for sending me a copy of the book for review purposes.

Ana and Connor have been having an affair for three years. In hotel rooms and coffee shops, swiftly deleted texts and briefly snatched weekends, they have built a world with none but the two of them in it.

But then the unimaginable happens, and Ana finds herself alone, trapped inside her secret.

How can we lose someone the world never knew was ours? How do we grieve for something no one else can ever find out? In her desperate bid for answers, Ana seeks out the shadowy figure who has always stood just beyond her reach – Connor’s wife Rebecca.

Peeling away the layers of two overlapping marriages, Here is the Beehive is a devastating excavation of risk, obsession and loss.

As Here is the Beehive is told in verse I thought I would attempt a review in verse. I am in no way trying to imitate the quality of Sarah Crossan’s writing. I just wanted to try something different.

Here is the Beehive,

an innovative story told in verse,

by turns heartbreaking and infuriating.

 

Ana Kelly, probate lawyer, mother, wife, lover, mistress,

failing at all since the loss of Connor.

Unable to publicly grieve, holding sorrow in, ready to explode.

 

Ana, you’re unlikeable, your behaviour is out of control

and obsessive

and yet…..and yet…..

I sort of understood.

 

Through my fingers, my eyes traced your spiral of destruction,

heading towards the inevitable mess

you were creating

and

I felt moved.

 

A story hard to put down, I had to know

the outcome.

I hoped.

 

Sarah Crossan is a beautiful and lyrical writer

with depth and raw emotion

shining through every word.

Tough subject matter, real life

is not faultless.

 

But Here is the Beehive almost is.

Sarah Crossan is Irish. She graduated with a degree in philosophy and literature before training as an English and drama teacher at Cambridge University and worked to promote creative writing in schools before leaving teaching to write full time.

She completed her Masters in creative writing at the University of Warwick. In 2010 received an Edward Albee Fellowship for writing.
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