LALINE PAULL
Ecco, 2014. $25.99, 352 pages.
IT’S HARD to be an individual when you’re born into a society whose motto is “Accept, Obey, and Serve,” but Flora 717 is special from the start. Born to the lowly sanitation caste, she’s “obscenely ugly,” “excessively large,” and yes, a honeybee. So opens playwright Laline Paull’s dystopian debut novel, The Bees.
Although her hive unquestioningly values only hard work, self-sacrifice, total obedience, and cultlike Queen-worshiping, bold Flora is caught between this ingrained dogma and her own curiosity. Able to speak while her fellow caste sisters cannot, she is tolerated as somewhat of an experiment (a rare thing in this totalitarian state) and is soon allowed to survey hidden parts of the labyrinth hive as she moves in an unprecedented progression up the…
