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Wednesday, March 5, 2014

The Hive by Gill Hornby 340 pages



The Hive could have been easily called “The Clique”, but that would not have been nearly as much fun.  This is the story of a group of mothers at St. Ambrose School in England.  It was difficult to get into the book at first, sorting all the women, their names and nicknames, and their affiliations, but it was well worth the time it took, in the end.  A very entertaining part of the book were all the figures of speech and slang used by the British women in conversations.  Of great fun for me was seeing “and Bob’s your uncle”, one of my favorite expressions, used in print.

There is, of course, a queen bee, named Bea, in this case.  However, many of the other women in the story would like to see Bea unseated.  The mother of one of the main characters, Rachel, even has bee hives in her garden as a hobby.  The workings of the hives are explained in detail, and serve as an example of the interactions of the women.

The minutes of the St. Ambrose fund-raising committee are about as funny as they can be, laugh out loud funny, in fact.  Plenty of the conversations and plots and manipulations are also laugh out loud funny.


I would recommend this book.

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