Reviews for The Honey Thief

The average rating for The Honey Thief based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-10-22 00:00:00 Christopher Curley The good thing with Elizabeth Graver is that her writing seems to carry a natural ease. I didn't have a lot of trouble accessing the story. Though there were lapses here and there. But the bad thing about the honey thief is this, (just what I felt - is that it leans too much towards the aspects of what ails her characters rather than how the same characters deal with what ails them. I don't know if that makes sense. But there seems to be so much hesitation in her characters to reveal themselves. Whether it was meant to be a stylistic device to really create suspense or show their vulnerability, it didn't seem to me to deepen the story or develop the characters much better. But I loved her attention to detail about bees, about bipolar, and the intrigues of growing up on the part of Eva. But the ending, it lacked that punch. Burl should have fallen for Miriam, or vice versa, or a drastic alteration of their lives or something.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-08-20 00:00:00 Brian Gibbs (2.5) Ever since I read The End of the Point, I've meant to try more by Graver. This was her second novel, a mother-and-daughter story that unearths the effects of mental illness on a family. Eleven-year-old Eva has developed a bad habit of shoplifting, so her mother Miriam moves them out from New York City to an upstate farmhouse for the summer. But in no time Eva, slipping away from her elderly babysitter's supervision and riding her bike into the countryside, is stealing jars of honey from a roadside stand. She keeps going back and strikes up a friendship with the middle-aged beekeeper, Burl, whom she seems to see as a replacement for her father, Francis, who died of a heart attack when she was six. Alternating chapters look back at how Miriam met Francis and how she gradually became aware of his bipolar disorder. This strand seems to be used to prop up Miriam's worries about Eva (since bipolar has a genetic element); while it feels true to the experience of mental illness, it's fairly depressing. Meanwhile, Burl doesn't become much of a presence in his own right, so he and the beekeeping feel incidental, maybe only included because Graver kept/keeps bees herself. Although Eva is an appealingly plucky character, I'd recommend any number of bee-themed novels, such as The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, The History of Bees by Maja Lunde, and even Generation A by Douglas Coupland, over this one. Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.