.com Review
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An Best Book of April 2019: (
//www..com/b/?node=17143709011 ) When Paul Simon sang that “every
generation throws a hero up the pop charts,” he could just as
easily have been talking about memoirs. From The Liar’s Club to
Angela’s Ashes to The Glass Castle, and from there to 2018’s
Educated, every generation has been rocked by the recollections
of those who were dealt a rotten hand in the parental poker game.
And readers don’t even need to be in that club to appreciate the
genre: the grateful of thinking “there but for the grace
of God go I” is as visceral as thinking “me too.” For too many of
these memoirists, salvation lay on the far shore of adulthood.
What sets The Honey Bus apart from the rest of the genre then, is
that it is simultaneously a story of survival and salvation.
Meredith May’s her abandoned her, her little brother, and
their mother fairly early on, and her mother retreated into a fug
of mental illness, rage, and despair. Taken into the care of her
maternal grandparents Meredith forged an unbreakable bond with
her grandher, who taught her about community, loyalty, and
survival by way of his favorite pastime, making honey in a rusty
old bus parked in the yard of their Big Sur home. This
touching memoir celebrates family, the lessons we can learn from
nature, a marvelous little insect, and those heroic grandparents
who, even when things fall apart, ensure the center can hold.
--Vannessa Cronin
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Review
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“A moving memoir… A fascinating and hopeful book of
family, bees, and how ‘even when [children] are overwhelmed with
despair, nature has special ways to keep them safe.’” —Kirkus
Reviews
“[A] sharply visceral memoir.” —Booklist
“Powerful… Moving and thoughtful.” —Publishers Weekly
“Filled with hope, grace, beauty, and wisdom, this book is like
warm honey in the sunshine. It beautifully illustrates how nature
- even honeybees - can teach and heal us, if only we open our
minds and hearts. It's the kind of book that stays with you long
after you've finished it—a rare treasure—and you don't have to be
a bee lover to be deeply moved by May’s wonderful story. I'm
recommending it to everyone I know." —Stacey O’Brien, New York
Times bestselling author of Wesley the Owl
"Captivating and surprising.... If you've ever been stung by a
bee you will instantly forget the venom and remember forever the
sweetness and redemption bees offer in this extraordinary book."
—Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of How To Be A
Good Creature and The Soul of an Octopus
"If Meredith May's book was simply an ethology of bees I would
devour every word; her prose is tender, thoughtful and
transporting. But The Honey Bus is so much more - a memoir of
aching loneliness, reckoning and redemption. Beautiful and
brave." —Domenica Ruta, New York Times bestselling author of With
or Without You: A Memoir
“The wounded feminine, the missing masculine, healed by a
relationship with honeybees. An innocent child’s hard won journey
to adulthood--clear eyed, often very funny, and agonizingly
compassionate. The Honey Bus is all these things and more--so if
you’ve ever been a lonely child, or want the world to become a
kinder place, here is your book.” —Laline Paull, author of The
Bees
"The Honey Bus is a rare treat for true storytelling deeply
rooted in science. Everyone will leave this book with much more
knowledge about bees and humanity, and the compassion that lives
at the intersection of the two. [A] captivating coming of age
family story." —Noah Wilson-Rich, Ph.D., author of The Bee: A
Natural History
"To read about Meredith May's bee family and her human family is
to garner heart strength. A true story in every sense." —Maxine
Hong Kingston, bestselling author of The Woman Warrior
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About the Author
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MEREDITH MAY spent sixteen years at the San
Francisco Chronicle, where her narrative reporting won the PEN
USA Literary Award for Journalism and was short-listed for the
Pulitzer Prize. She is coauthor of I, Who Did Not Die and is a
fifth-generation beekeeper. She lives in San Francisco, where she
keeps several hives in a community garden.
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