The Burying Beetle (1)

Gussie #1

by Ann Kelley

It was after I ate King that everything started to go wrong in our entire family, as if someone had put an evil spell onto us, a hex - like a bad fairy godmother had said at my birth, when you are eleven you are going to be struck by a sorrow so big it will be like a lightning bolt. There will be grief like a sharp rock in your throat. Twelve-year-old Gussie was born with a rare, life-threatening heart disease, but it hasn't hampered her curiosity. When she reads about the Burying Beetle, which has the unusual habit of burying dead birds, mice, and other small animals by digging away the earth beneath them, it becomes her mission to find one. As she searches the Cornish coast for the elusive insect, Gussie learns be like the Burying Beetle, to bury things past and to live.

Genres: Fiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2005

About the author

Ann Kelley is the author of The Burying Beetle (shortlisted for the Branford Boase Award) and The Bower Bird (Winner of the Costa Children’s Book of the Year Award). She has also published two poetry collections, The Poetry Remedy (1999) and Paper Whites (2001). She has won several prizes for her poems and has run courses for aspiring poets from her home. She is an honorary teaching fellow at Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Exeter and Plymouth. Her collected photographic works are Born and Bred (1988) and Sea Front (2005).

Reviews

[Jayne Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book aimed mainly at children and teens, but as I had bought it I read it anyway. There is no plot, so it won't appeal to anyone who likes constant action. It's more of an exploration of the beauty in nature, the small details that we may miss when we think we have years and years to notice them. The narrator of the story knows her life may well be short as she has a serious heart complaint, and it's good to have an opportunity to see things through her eyes. One I'm looking forward to my children reading.

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gussie is a 12 year-old girl.

Her parents are divorced and Gussie’s mother moves the two of them to a cottage on the outskirts of St Ives on the North Coast of Cornwall. She hopes that the milder Cornish climate and the better air quality will help Gussie’s health.

Because Gussie has a congenital heart defect. Her life expectancy isn’t great, but a heart and lung transplant offers some hope, if only a match can be found.

Gussie’s life is constricted, because she is quickly short of breath and she can’t go to school for fear of picking up an everyday illness that would compromise her heart.

It could be depressing, but it really isn’t.

Because Gussie is wonderfully alive, her thoughts dashing here and there, because there really is so much to take in, so much to think about.

Her head is full of films and books. And she observes the world around her, and in time the everyday wonders of nature that she sees but so many people miss captivate her, even pushing those films and books to one side.

It was wonderful to spend time with her.

Not too much happens, but that really doesn’t matter. Gussie observes the day-to-day details of life beautifully, and that, together with her cares and concerns, paints a wonderfully rich, complex picture of her inner life.

What this is, you see, is a quite beautifully written meditation on the importance of the small details of life, and the ordinary things that are actually so very special.

This is a book packed full of so many wonderful thoughts, sights and incidents. And it’s a book with the power to touch your heart and soul, and to make you look at the world a little differently.

I am so glad I met Gussie, and I am not quite ready to let her go.

Fortunately there are sequels …

[sisterimapoet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderful. I read a fair few books aimed a younger readers - mostly in the hope that every now and then I stumble on one that has a lot to offer me as an adult and this is one. It wasn't the obvious things that appealed - my reaction wasn't one of feeling sympathy for a child facing a serious illness - my respect came more for the way Kelley has captured a young girl taking in and taking control of her environment. A believable set of characters, and I'm pleased there is a sequel so I can spend more time in their company.

[Lily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually 3/5 stars :') The writing style was BEAUTIFUL, but i was expecting more of a quick read. Mostly Gussie's inner dialogue and her view of the world/her memories. The thing was, when i put it down i didn't feel the need to pick it back up again ... Review should be up later!

[Terri · Rating 5 out of 5]

So far I love this book. This book is agem ever page for me was a aha moment. I am keeping this book in my bookshelf for my daughters and granddaughters to read

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really lovely, and a winning main character. It doesn't have loads of plot but what it lacks in that arena, it makes up for in personality and sweetness.

[Loonywoman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Teen fiction but probably enjoyable to all age ranges interested in the beauty of nature and the brevity of human life. Quite lyrical but the maturity of this 12 year old girl was inauthentic to me, no matter how much she had experienced in her short life. Maybe over analytical of me but the characteristics of grandparents (born in the 1920s if her mother is 53 in 1999) she described were more in keeping with the generation before that.

[James Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very moving, beautifully written book. I had no idea what to expect when I started this story of a young girl's vulnerable life in Cornwall. It soon became clear that this story is about so much more than the family trauma of a life-threatening illness. The wonderful writing helps the narrator express tenderness, awe, and the beauty of living for the moment that makes this book, and its narrator unforgettable. It is a story that will live with you long after you finish reading it.

[Lucy S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unique, completely unique. This book has such a hopeful, exhilarating way of looking at ordinary life

[Claire]

I really liked this but I can't figure out why. I don't feel like there was a plot and I couldn't relate to Gussie. It was well written and I learned a lot but not my favorite.

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pleasant little book, heart warming and sad at the same time.