The Cure for Death by Lightning has so much potential that, for me, is never fulfilled. What a great start! The writing, the imagery, the rhythms, the characters all sucked me into the vortex that was a languid small town in British Columbia in WW II. But then, such a letdown! It seems that the Gail Anderson-Dargatz tried so hard to create unusual and interesting characters that she forgot what to do with them. According to the jacket blurb of the copy that I have, The Cure for Death by Lightning was prompted by a short story the author had written earlier. And I think here is the problem. She tries to stretch a good short story into a novel, thereby leaving it somewhat threadbare.

Like several other readers who have reviewed this book, I stumbled accross it almost by accident. But what a great novel! It has been a long time since a book has sparked such vivid images for me - some were diturbing, others deeply moving. I imagined every detail... the one-story farm house, the winter house, the barn yard,Coyote Jack, the Albino Crow. Dugatz is to be commended for her poetic writing style. A truly captivating novel which is beautifully written.

A very interesting first novel by Gail Anderson-Dargatz, just out in quality paperback. It's the story of 15-year-old Beth Weeks, daughter of a farming family in western Canada in the early years of WWII. Along with the commonplace grittiness of their farm life (the endless chores, the birth and death of livestock, the loneliness), there's also the oddities of small-town life, with its eccentrics, tragedies, property feuds, marriages, funerals, and festivals...and given the fact that Beth's dominating, temperamental father seems to be suffering from a combination of depression and psychosis, the Weeks family's popularity is not too high in town just now. There's also a strong undercurrent of Native American spirituality and mythology running through the novel---at times it's the only explanation for an event, unrational as that might sound. One might almost think of this as a Canadian version of a Latin American "magical realism" novel: translate tropic to temperate, jungle to prairie, Spanish heritage to British...The title originates with the scrapbook kept by Beth's mother, a hodgepodge of recipes, Christmas cards, household and family lore, observations, and agonies, a sort of collaged diary of this woman's private life.

I enjoy novels told in first-person narration, if the narrator's voice is an interesting one---and Beth is one of the more interesting voices I've come across lately.

At first, I had a very hard time getting into this book. All I saw were errors that authors should never make (or should they?) when they write. Errors like excessive points of view, passive voice and telling not showing. This dissipated as I got more into the novel and "went with the flow." The "errors" were in fact part of the novel. The author meant the novel to be this way,thereby making it even harder to write. It is one thing to try to avoid these mistakes, but it is another to use them deliberately--and use them well. This she did exceptionally well.

A Recipe for Bees is the story of Augusta Olsen in the autumn of her years. The present only covers a short period of time, but the back story covers her whole life. She reminisces through flash backs to her marriage to Karl and his obnoxious father. Because of his father, Karl really cannot relate to her or to life in general until late in life--but thankfully not too late. But to get this final stage of her life, Augusta had to live and she had to learn.

The story is interwoven with the history and practice of keeping bees. The author deftly weaves these into the story making it part of the story. Especially interesting is the swarm of bees that stayed in the barn until they were able to joined again at the hive. Her life is like that swarm of bees.

It is a light read and enjoyable read. I recommend it highly.

I picked up a copy of A Recipe for Bees at ... without knowing anything about it -- it just seemed interesting after reading the back cover. The book did indeed remind me quite a bit of The Stone Diaries, and also Drowning Ruth (both great reads, by the way). It's got that whole mid-20th century rural thing happening. The story follows the life of Augusta Olsen, now aging with a weak hip, through a series of flashbacks. Unlike other reviewers, I didn't find the flashbacks too difficult to follow, although I do agree that after a while, all of Augusta's visions and sightings on one day in the present that triggered all the memories got just a little too formulaic and convenient. The novel doesn't have anything too pretty to say about growing old, either. Nevertheless, I found A Recipe for Bees to be interesting and well-written. The theme of bee-keeping was well-woven into the plot, and nicely framed the themes of marriage, children, and infidelity. Gail Anderson-Dargatz is a talented writer and I look forward to reading more from her.

A few years ago, a book entitled "The Stone Diaries" received a lot of notice. I read the book and found it interesting but depressing. "Diaries" was a tale told through an older dead woman's diaries.

"A Recipe for Bees" follows a similiar approach, but it's a very different book. It left me feeling reflective, but it also left me with a sense of serenity. God's in his heaven and all's right with the world, when love, forgiveness and acceptance make it so.

"A Recipe for Bees" opens one afternoon as Augusta Olsen, a woman in her 70's, arrives home after a difficult rail trip. Augusta's daughter Joy has dispatched her from the hospital where Joy's husband is undergoing brain surgery. The book ends 5-6 hours later, sometime after dinner when the fate of Joy's beekeeper husband is known. During that period Augusta reflects over her life.

"A Recipe for Bees" is as skillfully woven as the rugs Augusta's mother Helen once made--pulling strands of colored wool through pieces of burlap backing. One of Helen's rugs had a large pink rose woven into the center. This beautiful book is like that rug, a work of art.

The book is a love story--of a long marriage. At each turn of events, the marriage is different. In the beginning, you wonder how Augusta can stand her life with Karl on the cold comfort farm that killed his own mother. But Augusta finds ways to cope. She fishes with the pastor of her church. She finds work in town to earn a little pin money. She takes a lover, she has a baby, she takes up bee-keeping. The bees are always hovering in the background.

Augusta learned bee-keeping by observing her mother Helen. When Helen dies, Augusta's father Manny turns out the hives, a European custom to aid the ascent of the beekeeper's soul. All the swarms of bees disburse except for one that stays until sunset, clustered in a ball against the kitchen window. Then "catching the last of the light [the bees flew] off in a glittering golden-red globe that moved through the sky as if guided by a single mind."

Helen's bees take up residence in the abandoned honey shed where she bottled her honey. Decades later, after experiencing a vision of her mother in the honey shed, Augusta uses their descendents and her mother's bee-keeping equipment to become a bee-keeper. Honey, bees, pollen, nectar, and flowers are the metaphors of Augusta's life.

The author has placed a beautiful collection of photos of her own Canadian family in this book. Gail Anderson-Dargatz writing is reminiscent of the tales by Alice Munro.