Hi
How are you? And your sister? And everyone?
I know you’re busy, so I won’t take much of your time. I wouldn’t have written, unless you told me to. But I have to say I’m glad I can do that – in every sense of the word.
I read The Honey Thief By Elisabeth Graver and the first thing I want to point out is that the translator Bath Sheva Mane has done an amazing job. I mean really. Her language is so refined, rich and flowing – it was a pleasure. It’s not only because I’ve started paying special attention to the translator’s work – well, maybe it has something to do with it, but here is was evident, right from the start. I really enjoyed her. And Elisabeth Graver, of course. Although I had my doubts: the person who read the book before I did gave it to me. Not that his criticism was lethal. It was rather his indifference that almost prevented me from reading it.
Almost.
I thought, based on that criticism, that The Honey Thief would be yet another story: standard, banal and uninteresting. Something anyone can say.
Then, before I read it, I came to the book’s defense and said that everyone has a story because everyone is world within oneself. It’s the way you tell it that makes the difference.
Now, after I’ve read it, I can say that’s true: Eva’s and Miriam’s and Francis’s and Brel’s story can be the story of many other people, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that it’s still a story within itself. As such it has sad poetry and a rhythm of its own.
And yes, it is interesting.
Maybe interesting isn’t the right word.
Doleful.
Doleful and bleak and unresolved and unimproved but still draws the eye and the heart.
The back flyleaf, which I always read afterwards, tries to bestow an optimistic feeling to the ending, tying up all the lose ends on an encouraging note.
I must admit, I didn’t find that to be so.
Evidently, it’s not something one declares: “a doleful and bleak book to read. Highly recommended!”
But there is no point in being angry about the misleading advertising.
It’s all Photo-Shop, you know.
So why read it?
Maybe because of Miriam. A gray but not dreary woman, who strives to do something with the little she has. Someone who doesn’t have dreams of her own. Life directs her, forward and onward, for better and for worse.
She studied law to make her mother proud and stopped because her mother died and there was no one to be proud about it anymore.
She was angry at her father who had left her and preserved her anger as a substitute for love – until she met Francis.
She initiated a relationship with the mysterious Italian – American prince, but never felt fully secure with him. She never asked for much, didn’t bicker. She was very careful not to mass up the relationship, not to change.
She got pregnant and gave birth to a baby girl whom she began to love much later, after a rough start.
From the baby Miriam’s strength and desire to live grew stronger. The need to protect herself and her daughter intensified as well as Miriam’s spiritual connection to her late mother.
Miriam doesn’t have practical motivation or an inspiration or a childhood dream – all the things the modern world is so eager to cultivate. Her life resulted from circumstance: one thing led to another. She became who she was by overcoming who she had once been: restrained, reflective and frightened.
You know, the more I think about it, the more fashionable it seems to be. Like those new High Tech kitchens – all black and metallic. We expect our reality to look the same: sharp, clear, conclusive. Everything has to be practical, businesslike. Only it’s not like that. It’s not like that at all.
It’s true – the colors had sharpened. The focus had centered. But life outside the office and away from the computer still flows in a different rhythm, a little less polished, a little less clear.
I happened to watch yesterday the loveliest movie – With Love… from the Age of Reason with Sophie Marceau:
It’s in French, so I’ll translate. It’s about a very successful business woman who turns 40. On that day she begins to receive a series of letters from herself, that is – from the girl she was at the age of seven. Back then, when she was called Marguerite, she deposited letters with a notary, to hold on to them until she would arrive at the proper age.
Why, you ask?
The answer is revealed later, and it has to do with fact that Marguerite had turned herself into Margaret and tried very hard to forget the girl she was at the age of seven.
Why, you ask?
Because Marguerite’s father had left them, and she and her mother and brother were all alone. Growing up was difficult. Growing older, therefore, became a way to escape that difficulty, to become someone strong, impressive and undefeated. The kind everyone is afraid of, someone who will never break or will allow anyone else to break him or her.
Marguerite started that process as a counter reaction to everything she didn’t want to be. But at the same time she tried to protect herself from becoming someone who would not remember Marguerite at all.
It worked, in the movie’s delightful way (thanks to Sophie, of course).
It turned the painful history into something one can and should live with.
It’s very much like what Miriam had tried to do. The only thing she actually tried to achieve, of her own initiative.
Unlike Sophie, she wasn’t so successful.
Miriam’s daughter, Eva is a character… I would like to think she is just rebellious but I’m not sure. Maybe she has more of her father in her than I care admit. His emotional vulnerability – unidentified and uncontrolled (I’m not a psychologist nor a psychiatrist, so I allow myself not to be 100% sure. I rely on Eva’s older friend – Brel – that just might know what he is saying).
Eva is angry at her mother, but at the same time she feels as if she is responsible for her life. As if her actions were to determine if Miriam would live or die. That’s why she steals. That’s her way to save her mother, or prevent her from getting hurt (again, it doesn’t make much sense, but does it necessarily indicate a mental illness?)
Eva is like Marguerite – she has her own world and it’s filled with pain and helplessness. Sometimes she hates it – sometime she yearns for it. I think that mostly she just wants what she can’t have – the father and the family and all the things that should have been hers, but aren’t.
Maybe all she has to do is to wait and grow up, allow life to define itself for her. Like her mother did. Like Brel did, when he wasn’t satisfied with the path his father had outlined for him and found himself a new and happier existence as a specialist beekeeper. Not that this reality doesn’t have its trials and tribulations, but at least, most of the time, Brel has peace of mind and control over what happens to him.
All this occurs with bees in the background. They have this ultra organized world – very well planed and effective. Like our expectations. It’s interesting that nature can be so meticulous. Or maybe not: after all, no one had stopped to ask bees how they exactly feel about it.
Eva likes the bee’s world. She is drawn to it due to the lack of stability in her own life.
Brel loves bee’s world. He is drawn to it because of everything it allows him – the magic of honey making, the connection to his late grandmother, his place in the ancient dynasty of beekeepers from old times and faraway places.
The only one who doesn’t care for it is Miriam. Well, nobody bothered to count her in. Actually, she pretty much disappears from the story the moment she and Eva arrive to the country. Her story takes place in Manhattan. Her daughter’s story takes place here.
Remember Fried Green Tomatoes? Idgie Threadgoode the Bee Charmer?
Perhaps Elisabeth Graver remembered her as well.
I don’t think she remembers Poe, though. It’s really not about eating the honey as much as getting it (true, Poe had a hard time getting the honey, but he wanted to eat it, whilst Eva doesn’t have such a desire. Neither does Brel).
The bees, with their exemplary organization, with their commanding queen and her faithful subordinates, are the only solid element in the story. But on the other hand, Elisabeth Graver explains that her main interest was the memory: the bee’s remarkable memory (they will always return to their hive’s previous location, if it isn’t removed too far away. You can read about it too, if you like). I think it is also the case with Miriam’s and Eva’s disturbing memory, which they wish to leave behind, but can’t.
Maybe The Honey Thief is Eva’s story that radiates on all the others.
Maybe.
What I can say for certain is that this story – which doesn’t have a harmonious ending, teaches us about love and compassion and forgiveness. It is a story about the reality of three people who are trying to get closer to each, one way or the other. Sometimes they succeed, sometimes they fail. Three people who are trying to understand themselves through the people who surround them and those who shaped their emotional history. This is a story about unfulfilled love between a woman and a man, a daughter and a father, a beekeeper and a doctor.
And it also makes you want to eat honey, at least a little.
Once I ate genuine bee honey. It was the best honey I’ve ever tested.
Did the title make you think about the The Book Thief? (The Honey Thief came out first – 2000. The Book Thief was published in 2005. Now I wonder…).
Hope to hear good news from you – soon.
All the best,
Gitit
