The Hive by Gill Hornby
It’s obvious enough this book isn’t “high art.” It ain’t winning any Nobel Prizes for Literature; it’s not gonna be quoted from or passed down to the next generation. Does that disqualify it from making your reading list? It shouldn’t.
The Hive could be most easily compared to the movie Mean Girls, starring Lilo, screenplay written by the brilliant Tina Fey. Hornby makes no excuses or pretensions about this – a dedication in the book of the book even gives credit to Rosalind Wiseman and her non-fiction guide to female social behaviors, Queen Bees and Wannabes, the book that, surprise, Fey also used as the inspiration for Mean Girls. Looking at the press release that came with the book, the first line (I’m not joking here): “The Hive is Mean Girls for moms.” In bold like that, too, so you have to read it.
Not a mom? It’s cool, me neither. I’d have to argue that The Hive relates more to Fey herself and even her memoir, Bossypants than any film with Amanda Seyfried in a leading role. ((I could go on for awhile here about how strongly I’m convinced that Fey and my closer-in-age contemporary-idol Lena Dunham are The Perfect Examples of American Womanhood Today and how that means, yes, I am going to eat that third slice of pizza, and no, I would not rather have the Skinny Vanilla Latte or date that boring guy with more concrete life goals, but anyway, I’m doing a book review here (sort of), so if you want to hear more on that, message me later. ))
Anyway, what you need to know: The Hive is the novel parallel to Bossypants’ clever, insightful down to the last little detail of one woman eating four truffles while the others stopped at three, self-depreciating yet self-accepting style of the way women live today.
There’s a plot (it’s pretty loose) about an overly exclusively clique serving as a “fundraising for the school” group and the lives of individual members over the course of a rather dramatic school year. The beauty of the novel isn’t in the way these woman all over the course of the story kick out the bitchy “Queen-Bee” character from her commandeering role as chair of the committee, or in the way Hornby ever-so-unsubtly relates the modern woman’s social groups to that of a beehive – these are actually the worst parts and the places were I skimmed through with shame, thinking, “Oh my God, I’m reading Mean Girls for Moms in public.” The beauty of the novel comes as Hornby focuses on one of the moms and her individual struggles, which really, are everyone’s struggles. The beauty is in awkward little scenes, like one in which all the women get out measuring tape, comparing the sizes of their post-children asses, yet getting silent and uncomfortable when the fattest in the room points out that yes, she is the fattest in the room.
It’s better than the average marketed-to-today’s-woman novel – I’m thinking Confessions of a Shopaholic, Eat Pray Love, Bridgett Jones’ Diary, etc. (even though, if we’re being honest, those are not bad books and snobs should give them a chance). It has very little in common with the Clique books girls read in high school (if you have never seen those fake-Burberry covered “novels” with ambiguous photos of Blake Lively-esque girls on the cover, consider yourself lucky.) It has more in common with Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad than a paperback flush.
What I’m saying is basically, fuck “high-art” for four or five hours, read something that will make you laugh and sigh with common understanding, and give this book a chance.
