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Of Bees and Mist

Erick Setiawan (Goodreads Author)

3.77 · Rating details · 7,133 ratings · 1,143 reviews

Of Bees and Mist is an engrossing fable that chronicles three generations of women under one family tree and places them in a mythical town where spirits and spells, witchcraft and demons, and prophets and clairvoyance are an everyday reality.

Meridia grows up in a lonely home until she falls in love with Daniel at age sixteen. Soon, they marry, and Meridia can finally esca ...more

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hardcover, 404 pages

Published August 4th 2009 by Simon & Schuster

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· 7,133 ratings · 1,143 reviews

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Sep 17, 2009 karen rated it liked it

Shelves: table, sshh-family-secrets

i wish i liked this more, i truly do. it's in the running for best cover of the year, which is of course why i bought it (in hardcover, before reading any reviews of it, and barely reading the flap-copy) but it seemed like my brand of tea - crumbling houses, family secrets, a touch of magic realism. only it was more than a touch. this is basically a fairy tale. which hit me unexpectedly as i was reading. but it's fine, i acclimate to the tone and continue reading... it's just that it's not very ...more

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Dec 28, 2009 Maggie Stiefvater rated it it was amazing

Shelves: adult, recommended

Almost exactly two hours ago, I finished reading OF BEES AND MIST, and I’m still in its spell. Normally I am opposed to writing reviews right after I read a book, because often my opinion of a book needs time to sort of marinate. I tend to get fonder of a book the longer I’ve had to think, but I have to say, my fondness for this book is pretty darn inconsequential. What matters is that this curious novel has dug its way under my skin in a way I can tell will last for quite awhile. Saying that OF Almost exactly two hours ago, I finished reading OF BEES AND MIST, and I’m still in its spell. Normally I am opposed to writing reviews right after I read a book, because often my opinion of a book needs time to sort of marinate. I tend to get fonder of a book the longer I’ve had to think, but I have to say, my fondness for this book is pretty darn inconsequential. What matters is that this curious novel has dug its way under my skin in a way I can tell will last for quite awhile. Saying that OF BEES AND MIST is a fable-like story of two women -- one whose birth home is infested by perpetual mist and one who literally whispers bees -- who are locked in furious and long-lasted battle is rather inadequate. If I add that its chapters are hung lusciously with metaphor (see what I did there?) I get a little closer.

But the real charm and danger both of this book are the familial relationships. Because the two women at the heart of the book (though there are many -- for a book written by a man, I’m pretty much blown away by the scads of nuanced, strong women in this novel)(he has possibly stolen my estrogen)(it’s all right, he’s making good use of it), Eva and Meridia, are mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Their common link is a pleasant but flawed man, and the way that the author paints the relationship between mother, daughter-in-law, husband, sister-in-law, etc. etc. is very familiar for all its magic realism trappings.

Meridia escapes from a troubled home life directly into the arms of Daniel, a guileless young man. From him she inherits a complicated family drama ultimately controlled by Eva, who is a wicked stepmother in the most horrifying and delicious meaning of the phrase. Anyone who has had the slightest amount of conflict with their in-laws or extended family will appreciate the subtleties and motivations of every character in OF BEES. Events and what each party’s perception of events are often delightfully confused. This is young, married life, served with family-sized side dishes of guilt trips, subtext, and meaningful looks. Definitely enough to share and enough again to take home for later. But there’s joy, too, and charm aplenty, and some moments stark and moving in their suddenly unsentimental view of love.

A clever tale like this, brimming with none-so-subtle metaphors and magic, could easily be an intriguing exercise in the fantastic and mundane, but the reason OF BEES is getting put here in my five-stars category is that the characters evoked genuine emotion and sympathy from me. The phrase “flawed, strong heroine” is thrown around too much, but Meridia is that if I’ve ever seen one. She makes bad choices, hard choices, but she always makes A choice and you’re always convinced she’s the hero regardless; her goodness is not in question. Normally, I can’t tolerate infidelity plotlines but infidelity in this case was necessary (though agonizing). This book was both a pleasure and a pain to read and I’m so glad I picked it up -- entirely by chance, while rushing through the store on the way out of town. Might’ve been the work of fate or of the engineering spirits, if OF BEES AND MIST is to be believed.

***wondering why all my reviews are five stars? Because I'm only reviewing my favorite books -- not every book I read. Consider a novel's presence on my Goodreads bookshelf as a hearty endorsement. I can't believe I just said "hearty." It sounds like a stew.*** ...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Karen rated it it was amazing

loved this book, this book was a National Blue Ribbon Award winner by BOMC several years ago... I have read many books on that list and have loved them all!

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Feb 01, 2017 Karlyflower *The Vampire Ninja, Luminescent Monster & Wendigo Nerd Goddess of Canada (according to The Hulk)* rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Karlyflower *The Vampire Ninja, Luminescent Monster & Wendigo Nerd Goddess of Canada (according to The Hulk)* by: Jess ❈Harbinger of Blood-Soaked Rainbows❈

Shelves: my-lovelies, wings-and-smoke

Because Jess says:

PS: If you don't love this book then....

Just please love this book! :)

Never fear my relationship with my #humanbestie remains intact… for the time being anyways. *side-eyes The Stranger*

5 words CAN break your heart Stars

I fell in love with Of Bees and Mist so slowly and entirely that it was not until I had put it down that I realized how completely it had consumed my thoughts. How deeply Setiawan’s words and characters had wound themselves around my bitter, black heart. But ...more

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Dec 18, 2011 Jess ❈Harbinger of Blood-Soaked Rainbows❈ rated it it was amazing

Shelves: a-bit-o-magical-realism, top-100, to-reread, that-cover-though, bizarrelandia, someone-needs-a-punch-in-the-face, reviewed, favorites, hard-copy, beautifully-written-words

In light of my human bestie just having read this and loved it, and also in celebration of this same human bestie's forthcoming trip to ME (8 days!), I am bumping this review because I loved this book so hard and am feeling the need to 're-read it soon.

________
This is a very hard book to review, since I don't think I've ever read anything else like it, and I'm not likely to in my lifetime. I don't really know how to describe this book. Others have called it magical realism, a fairy-tale, a fable In light of my human bestie just having read this and loved it, and also in celebration of this same human bestie's forthcoming trip to ME (8 days!), I am bumping this review because I loved this book so hard and am feeling the need to 're-read it soon.

________
This is a very hard book to review, since I don't think I've ever read anything else like it, and I'm not likely to in my lifetime. I don't really know how to describe this book. Others have called it magical realism, a fairy-tale, a fable.....and I'm not sure which category this novel seems to fit into. None very cleanly, that is.

Meridia is kind of a lost soul. She is sad and lonely, with very few friends, a cold mother and distant father, and is stuck in an old house with nobody to talk to and nobody to look up to. She meets Daniel when she is sixteen and is immediately swept into a beautiful fairy-tale love story when they marry and Meridia leaves her home to live with Daniel's family. Who at first seem pretty great, but once the illusions become unnecessary, Meridia finds herself in even more of a nightmare than the one she left.

Clairvoyance and magic are an everyday reality in the fictional town which serves as the setting. I know that some people who read this took an issue with this, but it didn't bother me at all. In fact, I found it refreshing to read a book where all the rules have been thrown out. Eric Setiawan also writes beautifully, and his poetic tone really added to the overall eerie atmosphere of the book. The characters are also extremely interesting and multi-faceted, and I loved learning new things about them and seeing their layers unravel as the plot thickens. This is a fairy-tale of sorts, one that is even more twisted than one the Brothers Grimm thought up. Daniel and Meridia have a beautiful love story that is strained, pulled, and twisted by familial and social circumstances. In a way, this fairy-tale serves also as an allegory and a fable as well, as every mystical creation has a deeper meaning.

All magic aside, the core of this novel is the survival of love amidst hard and cruel circumstances; whether they be family loyalties, or the threat of poverty, or even the dissipation of the fairy-tale romance that every relationship is fated to encounter. At times, this novel is heartbreaking, at times very moving. I was very sorry for it to end, and wish that actually this novel had been double its length. Like Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Of Bees and Mist made me long to stay in this mystical world a bit longer because I knew that there were secrets left to uncover, people left to meet, and more to this story than the one which ended on the last page. 5 beautiful, wonderful, mystical stars. I can't wait to re-read this soon. ...more

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May 03, 2014 Anne rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: waste-of-time, purdycovers, shit

It started out as something I thought I would enjoy: a fairy tale for adults. As the story progressed, I started to like it less and less. I don't know if it was partly due to the Dutch translation, but it all felt like the use of language was very cliché and something I could've written myself.
Somewhere halfway through the book, all (to me) irritating things were starting to add up and I was very close to giving up on it entirely. What irritating things you wonder?

1. How many times do you have It started out as something I thought I would enjoy: a fairy tale for adults. As the story progressed, I started to like it less and less. I don't know if it was partly due to the Dutch translation, but it all felt like the use of language was very cliché and something I could've written myself.
Somewhere halfway through the book, all (to me) irritating things were starting to add up and I was very close to giving up on it entirely. What irritating things you wonder?

1. How many times do you have to use the word 'womb'? I actually thought of counting the number of times myself, but then thought it was a waste of my time. When I get really bored at some point, I might still do it and add it here, just to give an indication on how ridiculously often this word is being used.
2. The stepmother is evil. Still evil. You thought she wasn't evil? She's evil. Yup, very evil. And still is. OKAY, WE GET IT, SHE'S EVIL!!! I actually said this (after a wee bit of cursing) out loud after reading this sentence: "The next morning, Patina showed up on Willow Lane with welts on her face and cigarette burns on her hands." Seriously?
3. How come every character in this book annoys the living feces out of me? They're all caricatures of themselves. I hated pretty much all of the adult male characters, especially Daniel. The only character I somewhat liked was Meridia, the main character, which was vital to making me able to finish this book. Still, her naivety was something I could barely stand as well. The same goes for the lack of willpower in the beginning of the story. Why would you stay in such a terrible house and with such a [insert bad word] of a husband.
4.Then there were the vulgar scenes and language which I didn't understand the usage of except maybe the author trying to make it clear that this is an ADULT fairy tale. I don't think that this is the way to do it. Adding a couple of obscene scenes to a Harry Potter book doesn't put an adult-stamp on it either; it just makes it look ridiculous and inappropriate.

One thing I'm wondering about is Ahab's home country: "Try us, and we'll ship you back ass first to the windmill hell you came from!". Was this a reference to Holland?

Anyhow, why not give this book one star instead of two after all this negative ranting? Because I finished it in about a week and was hoping for something unexpectedly interesting to happen. So it kept me going until the end. Don't get me started on the ending by the way...Something about forgiving and letting go. No way.

EDIT: I'm giving this book 1 star anyways because every time I think of it, I get annoyed all over again. ...more

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May 28, 2009 Jenne rated it it was ok

Shelves: arc

I really kind of hated this book, but at least it wasn't boring.
I can't imagine why you would dedicate a book to your mother, and then have the whole thing be about two of the worst mothers that have ever existed.
I know I'm always going on about the roles of women in fiction, but seriously, this guy apparently considers women to be barely sentient.
I mean, most of us really have better things to do than try to destroy the lives of everyone around us. ...more

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Dec 31, 2010 Yolanda Sfetsos rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy

This is Erick Setiawan's first novel. I was so impressed that I can't wait to see what else he's got to offer in the future.

At the core of the story is the life of Meridia and the people who come in and out of her life as she grows from an insecure child, into a very clever and strong woman. It all starts with her very strange parents and the cold house with ghosts in the mirrors and shadows on the walls. Then follows her life with the family she becomes a part of after she marries the love of h ...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Sarah rated it it was amazing

This is quite possibly my favorite book ever.

I lament the lack of grown-up fantasy novels, but this book delivers on that an so much more. It's more than just, "Look at this cool world I've thought up" and angst-y love triangles tropes that I see in too many of the stories I read. This book has depth, and the fantastic elements are just metaphors made tangible, a world steeped in magic but still filled with real. human emotions.

The whole book is permeated by the melancholy of lost love. The agai ...more

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Nov 08, 2013 Jen rated it it was ok

Shelves: i-hate-you-mommy, slipstream-sf-fantasy, lost-the-100-page-test, le-sigh

Page 84 is about as far as I got, although I did flip through looking for something to keep me going. That something, at least for me, wasn't there. Or it was there, but it was hidden in the brambly writing that wanted so badly to be artful and ghostly and embed shards of spooky magic into my heart but heart, my heart, you are so calloused. Book, what is it you really wanted to be? Did I miss it so completely or did you want to be all things and ended up nothing?

This may be my fault. I'm not a ...more

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Jun 18, 2015 Taryn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bipoc-author

Oh my heart!

I am so, so, SO glad I read this while on Thanksgiving break from work. If I’d tried to read it during the usual midweek hustle-bustle of life, there’s no way I could have slowed down enough to hang with it. And it would have been my loss, because holy peppercorns can Erick Setiawan write.

And that’s pretty cool in itself, because if you read his (very funny) bio, he’s not a native English speaker and has harbored doubts about his writing ability, going so far as to get an advanced de ...more

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Jul 23, 2019 Dana added it

DNF at 25%
I wanted to love the story as much as the cover....

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Mar 12, 2017 Imi rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2017, chinese, fiction, fantasy, family-dynamics, contemporary, kindle, magical-realism, authors-of-colour, indonesian

I don't think it is going to be easy to review this without giving too much away, because most of what I didn't like about it is to do with the direction of the plot in the second half. I was really enjoying the whimsical nature and magical realism of the first half, but in the second it turns into this petty, repetitive family drama, pretty much all "he said, she said". I couldn't stand the negativity of all the characters, even those we're clearly meant to be rooting for. I'm quite honestly ba ...more

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Oct 16, 2009 Jaffareadstoo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Jaffareadstoo by: newbooksmagazine

Set against a backdrop of a fantasy world we are introduced to two warring families who live their lives amidst magic and chicanery. Loaded with superstition and alive with intrigue, this is a stunning debut novel. In many ways this magical fantasy has several parallels with our modern world, yet we are never informed of time or place. It could be happening in the past or way ahead into our future. It is quite simply a novel of good versus evil, with the depth of characterisation lending an adde ...more

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Sep 11, 2013 Jules rated it it was amazing

Shelves: weird-and-wonderful

Wow, what a magical fable!

I was worried this book would focus too much on fantasy rather than feeling, and prove to be a bit shallow. What I didn't realise, was that I was going to get dragged into a both wonderful and harrowing world where feelings were expressed through that magic and fantasy.

It's as if all the feelings I experienced while reading this book came to life, be it in the form of mist, scents, ailments, the buzzing of bees, or the twinkle of fireflies.

I have honestly never read ...more

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May 13, 2009 Sarah rated it liked it

Recommended to Sarah by: Anna

Shelves: fancypants, swords-and-sorcerors

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Hmm. Well, I quite liked the beginning of this book and I felt like it had a lot of potential but I was a little disappointed that it developed into a story about a grudge between a woman and her evil mother-in-law. Really? Can't we get past that trope? Because, you know, women do nothing but fight with each other. And over what? A man, of course, namely Daniel, the son/husband. Because women don't do anything that doesn't have to do with men. Because women are irrational, see. HYSTerical. Ho ho Hmm. Well, I quite liked the beginning of this book and I felt like it had a lot of potential but I was a little disappointed that it developed into a story about a grudge between a woman and her evil mother-in-law. Really? Can't we get past that trope? Because, you know, women do nothing but fight with each other. And over what? A man, of course, namely Daniel, the son/husband. Because women don't do anything that doesn't have to do with men. Because women are irrational, see. HYSTerical. Ho ho ho.

Also I was so annoyed that Meridia went back to Daniel at the end of the book. I'm completely drawing an uninformed overarching statement here, but I feel like unconvincing romantic plotlines are par for course in all the magical realism I've read (which really is just this book and The Alchemist). Okay, they're supposed to be madly in love because he sang to her, or whatever, but he's a complete wimp who never seems able to learn that his mother is atrocious. Daniel could have done with some deeper character development. Like, some internal angst over loving his mother but realizing she's an evil crazy woman, would have been good. Instead we come to the simplistic conclusion that Daniel is just a rube.

And actually, what *about* Eva? It's kind of implied that she's actually really lonely and insecure but how cool would this book have been if the whole thing had had themes of woman's inhumanity to woman and the similarities between Eva, Meridia, and Rowenna and how the choices society presented them with created them?

Also, what is the deal with Hannah floating in and out and implying that she and Meridia are in love and then disappearing for hundreds of pages before showing up again, just as inexplicably? I almost want to say that Meridia ought to have kicked Daniel to the curb and had herself a nice affair with Hannah, except that all the disappearing and running away and inexplicability implies that Hannah would have been completely closeted and thus just as infuriating as Thickhead Daniel. By the time she showed up at the end and then was summarily dropped (or disappeared again) I was fairly annoyed with her too. Also, why is Hannah invisible to everyone else? Are we supposed to conclude that Meridia has dreamed her up as an unreliable, flaky, and confusingly flirty friend as a remedy to her isolation and depression?

Whatever. I know I totally just reamed the book but it was good mostly. It was well written, it's just that, for a book about women, it didn't do a whole of new stuff with the topic. The imagery and all that magical realism stuff was well done, atmospheric and all that. And kudos I guess for including Hannah at all, as well as not being shy about portraying Meridia as someone who desires, not just as an object of desire. And I'm predisposed to like generational stories of women's families after all. ...more

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Jan 26, 2014 Angela Powell rated it did not like it

So this is what I've learned about women in reading this book: they're spiteful, abusive, cold and with-holding from their husbands, are the cause of adultery, must be ice queens, servants, or whores, can't have a baby ever...seriously, every birth scene in this book resulted in death, blood, or curses, and every woman was an extreme; absolutely rage-filled or flat and meek and submissive.
Women, in this book, are worried about by others if, after their baby dies, they are no longer interested i ...more

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Feb 02, 2018 Bookish Ally rated it it was amazing

Shelves: magical-realism-and-or-fantastic

I can tell from the overall review scoring on this book (as if I wouldn’t know from the book itself) that this will be a book most will be divided into two categories- loved it and found it to be drivel. Put me firmly into the loved it category, please.

This book is hard to categorize - one part magical realism, one part fable, one part legend. It’s hard to tell the time or place that it takes place but if you are someone who loved the book you can describe the town, its streets, it’s familiar p ...more

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Mar 15, 2016 Kim Kaso rated it really liked it

Shelves: ladies-lit-group

This book is a solid 4+, but not a 5. I liked many aspects of it, but Eva was too much for me. Perhaps if there was some mitigating reason for her behavior, but as it was she tried to destroy the lives of everyone around her, stinging them with her vitriol, and that took a lot of enjoyment away for me. She seemed to embody every negative behavior, but did not feel like like an authentic character when put along side the others who were fully human & were mixes of good and bad. Magical realism fo ...more

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May 06, 2009 Quiltgranny rated it liked it

Shelves: arc

What a surprise I received when I started reading this book. I actually was prepared to dislike it because I had read elsewhere that it is a fantasy, and I don't do well with that type of narrative.

BUT - as I continued to read on, the magical became real and accepted not only by the people in the story, but the reader as well. I was not bothered by the mist or the bees, or the fireflies or the "ghosts". Instead I saw them as allegorical for desire/emptiness, hatred, and personal reflections. The ...more

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Oct 30, 2011 Sarah rated it did not like it

This is a great novel to study if you need an example of a painfully plodding storyline which conveys not one iota of emotion to the reader. Really. This is everything NOT to do as a writer. It is one of those novels that you want to give up on after page 5, saying--ugh, how did this thing get published?--but which you finish because you have promised your teenaged daughter (who read it) that you would. There are so few things you share with your teenaged daughter these days, and so you read ALL ...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Kitchengrrl rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Holy crap this book sucked. Read this only if you like listening to people endlessly abusing one another. Keep reading if you like overuse of pointless images. I like magical realism, but I kept waiting for there to be some sort of larger theme or something to tie everything together, and instead, the book just reaches the last page. It doesn't end, it doesn't stop, there's just a last page. Totally, totally lame. I wish I'd stopped listening at the beginning when I'd considered it. ...more

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Jun 12, 2016 Irene rated it it was ok

With its magical elements, non-specific time frame and archetypical characters, this had the feel of a modern fairytale. Like most traditional fairytales, this story told of negative relationships overcome and the victim triumphing. I do not favor this genre of storytelling. It deliberately avoids much of the complexity, subtlety of literary elements and smart dialogue I enjoy. But, I suspect that those who do like this type of book will have a positive reaction to this novel.

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Nov 25, 2010 Lyn Battersby rated it it was amazing

Shelves: do-not-loan-out-even-to-friends

I read a lot of Speculative Fiction, so felt a desperate need to dip into something a bit different. The label in the library classified Of Bees and Mist as a family saga, which sounded like the perfect palate cleanser.

To my surprise, Of Bees and Mist turned out not to just be a family saga, but also a fantasy saga. I found myself thoroughly engrossed within a few paragraphs and despite the arrival of a new grandchild in the household, managed to finish it within three days (a record in my house I read a lot of Speculative Fiction, so felt a desperate need to dip into something a bit different. The label in the library classified Of Bees and Mist as a family saga, which sounded like the perfect palate cleanser.

To my surprise, Of Bees and Mist turned out not to just be a family saga, but also a fantasy saga. I found myself thoroughly engrossed within a few paragraphs and despite the arrival of a new grandchild in the household, managed to finish it within three days (a record in my house where I'm the busy mother of 5).

This is the story of the harm families routinely do to one another. On the surface Meridea belongs to the average dysfunctional family. Her mother neglects her, her father emotionally abuses her. Her mother suffers from OCD while her father spends his time in the arms of a lover. The two only meet up once a day, for breakfast. They do not exchange a word.

Meridea grows up amonst this dysfunction and yet somehow manages to emerge in one piece. She meets and marries Daniel, the son of a business man and his overbearing wife. Now Meridea's problems really start.

Yes, yes, a commonplace saga, but what really sets this work apart is the tight interweaving of the spirit realm. The magic realism is so tight, so flawless, that it just seems to make sense. Setiawan's story-telling ability accomplished that which all Spec Fic authors crave, the ability to make the reader leave their disbelief at the door. I believed in the mists that carried Gabriel to his lover, then brought him home again. I believed in the bees that buzzed and stung and caused such awful migraines. I believed in the never ending staircase and the marigolds and lemon verbena.

This is one of those rare cross-genre novels where if you were to remove one part of it, the other part would fall done. The family is the skeleton of this novel, the saga the flesh and the magic the soul that breathes life to the story as a whole.

This year I read The Great Gatsby and considered it my discovery novel of the year. I'm afraid, however, that Of Bees and Mist has taken its place. ...more

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Feb 24, 2011 Maria rated it liked it

I think my favorite part of this book is the cover, so lovely. Lots of little images hidden in the vines. The story is full of magical realism which is a style I adore. i think it was at its strongest when describing the talents of the people at the market. I really wanted to love the book, but I felt it got weaker as it went on. The dialogue was particularly unconvincing. And while I was excited by the number of female characters in the novel, I was dismayed that the so infrequently felt real. ...more

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Jun 11, 2013 Darth J marked it as could-not-finish

Shelves: pretentious, disappointing, slow

I had heard some really enthusiastic things about this book which made me want to read it, but I couldn't get past the first 50 pages. The parts I read were drowning in purple prose and there was a huge lack of a plot. Nothing was happening and it was just really boring.

The cover is nice and it made me want to buy it (along with all the positive comments I had heard), but the book went nowhere fast and it felt like reading high school poetry in parts. I could feel that the author was setting up ...more

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Dec 18, 2020 Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: bizarre, fairy-tales, humor-me-and-tell-me-lies, controversial, read-in-2020

"There's truth even in the strangest story."

Strangely Mystical & Magical. A cautionary tale of family relationships. These characters are mean! Of Bees and Mist is an unusual novel and takes most readers a bit of adjusting to the fairytale tone of the story. The descriptions, dialogue and situations are outlandishly laughable. Drenched in drama and deception, there is plenty here to satisfy those with a taste of the twisted.

Of Bees and Mist is another book I've owned for over a decade and finall "There's truth even in the strangest story."

Strangely Mystical & Magical. A cautionary tale of family relationships. These characters are mean! Of Bees and Mist is an unusual novel and takes most readers a bit of adjusting to the fairytale tone of the story. The descriptions, dialogue and situations are outlandishly laughable. Drenched in drama and deception, there is plenty here to satisfy those with a taste of the twisted.

Of Bees and Mist is another book I've owned for over a decade and finally got around to reading in 2020. Now that I've experienced this novel, I have no interest in re-reading it and thus will be donating Of Bees and Mist to my neighborhood Little Free Library. This book wasn't particularly enjoyable for me, but certainly interesting.

The book cover features a rose vine with several hidden images.

Favorite Passages:

Inside, the house obeyed a law of its own. The wood floor echoed no sound of footsteps, and people simply appeared in doorways without warning. The spiral staircase shortened and lengthened at random, and it could take toddling Meridia two seconds to two hours to go from one floor to the other. Mirrors were especially treacherous: In them Meridia could glimpse unfamiliar landscapes and all shapes of apparitions.
________

Though she had no previous recollection of being there, the room looked welcoming and familiar. She grinned at the towers of books that made up the walls, at the hanging maps and graphs full of numbers. Cabinet after cabinet was jammed with flasks, beakers, burners. Meridia skipped toward the massive desk by the window. Jars of growing seeds populated the surface, and they were all winking at her.
_______

Failing to stop the chill where his shadow had touched her, she wondered if all fathers were cruel and all mothers forgetful.
_______

As she chopped, grilled, and boiled, Ravenna addressed the vegetables in a dark and private language, telling them of sorrow and despair. The fury of her pots and pans kept visitors away, while her air of absentmindedness spun a web of solitude about her.
_______

There were fowls dead and alive, fish heaped on beds of ice, crabs in bamboo crates, meat suspended from iron hooks. A woman grew herbs out of her body - thyme on her arms and rosemary on her chest - which customers plucked fresh with their own hands. A tattooed man swallowed whole radishes and spat them out chopped, and pickled.
_______

On morning in the spring of her twelfth year, Meridia was arranging her school books in the hall when she glanced up into the mirror and beheld the face of a ghost.
_______

"That little girl has no grace or beauty. She is awkward, unattractive, and silly. Her mind, if you could call it that, is idle and easily distracted. I expect nothing from her. She will bungle through life and slip out of it without leaving the faintest mark . . . "
_______

The days of Meridia's invisibility began with the nurse's departure.
_______

Then all of a sudden the commotion died. Meridia opened her eyes to an aching white silence. She had fallen into a place where time was suspended.
_______

The memory of being pushed and stepped on, of cleaver hacking against bones and flies feasting on rivers of blood, rose up and horrified her.
_______

They were teachers of mysticism, faith healers, doctors of the occult, prophets, exorcists, flagellants, and fortune-tellers. Standing on boxes or in booths decked with colorful banners, they distributed pamphlets and bulletins, offered guidance, and for the price of a few coins gave their blessings before the statue of the town founder. They administered healing by fire and ice, performed surgery without scalpels, and removed tumors by the laying of hands. A giant sheepdog barked away sins from afflicted souls. A one-eyed woman transmitted messages to the dead with the help of a lyre. For sale were crosses and prayer beads, relics of holy beings, antidotes to common poisons, and talismans against sickness and heartbreak. Those who had not done so were encouraged to secure the happiness of their loved ones by entering their names in the Book of Spirits.
________

The banner flapping from its triangular top read THE CAVE OF ENCHANTMENT. The song was coming from inside.
_______

"The spirits have chosen you."
_______

Daniel was the oldest child of a jeweler. Eighteen and handsome, he was carefree by nature and, rarely distressed, considered himself immune to temper. He was loyal and generous. He saw no faults in those he loved, and despite his share of skepticisms, he believed the world a just and harmonious place.
_______

Together they scoured the flower market, tossed coins at dancing snakes, viewed the evening projections at Cinema Garden, and tested the limits of their appetites with snacks made from goat testicles. In the bohemians' quarters, Daniel showed her a former actress who gulped down baby mice to preserve her youth, and a hirsute man who annually gave birth to a burning bush. In a secluded corner where the poets starved, they saw a merchant hawk blood, breath, and bones for the ailing.
_______

The brightness of this light was matched only by Daniel's eyes, shining with life and vitality as he initiated her into the mysteries of the earth.
One day, he was explaining to her the paths of summering birds when she asked him, "How do you know all this?"
"My father," he answered. "He thinks the secrets of the universe are far easier to understand than a woman's heart."
_______

Curled in the chest's center was the carcass of a newborn fawn. Frothy and bluish of skin, its stomach was pecked to pieces, the innards splattered over the ribs like cords of ribbon. There was a deep welt around the fawn's neck, and tiny brown worms were spilling out of its eyes. Meridia had just enough time to cover her nose when a rodent pushed its way out of the gaping mouth. Her scream was followed by Daniel slamming the lid back in place.
_______

"Are you all right?" he asked, lifting a thumb to her cheek. "You look as pale as a ghost."
Before she could answer, the sand slipped from beneath her feet. She fell flat on her back, screaming because a thousand birds were suddenly pecking at her womb.
________

"Mama was in labor for one hundred and thirty-seven hours, and her screams cold be heard from desert to sea. At one point, she was bleeding so much that blood was seen trickling out the front door. On the morning of the fourth day, Papa and the midwife begged her to save herself and give you up, but she set her teeth and told them to go to hell."
_______

"Listen carefully. The next time you see the three mists together - "
The nurse never finished her words, for the mists had pounced with a roar and whisked her into the sky. Screaming, the girl ran after them.
"Come back. Nurse! Come back!"
_______

"She's my mother. But sometimes I'd rather be trapped in a cave with a mountain lion than speak to her."
_______

"Tell your mother I'd rather saw off my own arms," said Meridia when Daniel told her.
_______

"Papa's telling me of beauty. Boundless, heavenly beauty. Immortal forest at dusk . . . He said the air is pure there because there's no rage, no shame, no guilt. Oh, isn't it beautiful, Mama?"
_______

"Bastard! Coward! Son of a bitch!" she barked. The break of dawn found her standing on wet grass, grim and erect with the terribleness of a storm.
_______

Meridia stared dumbly. Saw bright blood oozing from the woman's nose but could not move to help her.
"Come out, you pig! You rotten, good-for-nothing asshole!"
_______

It was a strange and startling lightness. Purged of the hatred of decades, the house jettisoned its yoke and floated on enchanted air. Ceilings rippled like waves. Walls swayed like windblown trees. The whimsical staircase morphed into an accordion of tunes. It was unsettling to take a lungful of air and not smell spite, to drink water from the fountain and not taste rage. The perpetual cold and dusk were gone. Light flooded the rooms and warmed the walls with a hundred golden shades.
_______

Left alone with Gabriel, Meridia was incapable of separating impressions from illusions.
_______

For a second all she saw was sunlight, brilliant yellow, and headless man in a military-style jacket standing in its midst. Then he stepped away from the light. Pale skin, long mustache, eyes the color of cobalt. Because his hair had the same radiance as the sun, she had not been able to see him before.
_______

At first, she was able to rely on her cheerfulness to fend them off, but as summer descended into autumn, her optimism gave way to restlessness and despair. How would she ever escape her mother?
_______

"We will drive you out. We will tear you down. Try us, and we'll ship you back ass first to the windmill hell you came from!"
_______

"Something very strange has happened, madam."
_______

(view spoiler)
_______

"I'm not interested in your melodrama or your make-believe."
_______

She had the peculiar sensation of stepping back in time and looking into her own young face.
. . . .
Suddenly, as her memory blurred with the present, Eva felt a slab of gravestone leap out of the past and smash against her back. The impact buckled her knees and dropped her to the floor.
_______

"Horseshit!" Malin retorted, jerking her skirt free. "You never mourn anybody but yourself. You never consider anybody's feelings but your own. You know what you are? You're a vile, rotten, venomous bitch who's hardly fit to mother a beast!"
_______

"Have me back? At all costs? What makes you think you can afford it? I'm not for sale, you see. I never was."
_______

"You can't wake up something that's dead and buried."
_______

"You're always more your mother's son than you were my husband."
_______

. . . a line of hooded nuns bearing whips and a half-clad man on a cross drew her toward Independence Plaza. The Festival of the Spirits had returned to town.
_______

"I've come back," her old friend said, laughing. "For good. My husband died last summer. The doctors said it was his kidney, he said it was my cooking. Now I've grown too old and fat for traveling. Do you know a place where I can stay?"
_______

. . . the dancing flowers pulled her along like a sliding carpet . . . ...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Finooola rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

I liked this book, but have to give it the the 3-star-treatment thanks to a feeling of ambiguity and loose ends I got from it. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed certain ambiguous aspects of it, for example the way it was impossible to fix it in an analogous period in history. What I didn't like was the feeling that the characters were symbolic, and that I didn't grasp of what. In that sense, maybe the book was a bit too smart for me, and if that's the case then I am at fault *hangs head*. However, a ...more

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Jun 29, 2009 Elaine rated it really liked it

It is hard to believe that this is Erick Setiawan's first book. It is well written with reality, symbolism, mysticism and fantasy. This is not my usual choice of reading material but I found I was drawn into the book by the end of the first chapter. I found it difficult to put down, wanting to figure out the mysterious aspects, and to see what happens to the characters with pity, admiration and hopes of redemption. The writing style is one that I love in a book, because it does not spell out eve ...more

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Jan 31, 2010 Meagan rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, book_club

Meridia, the daughter of two distant, distracted, and angry parents, has grown up in a house haunted by an unrelenting cold, mysterious colored mists, apparitions in the mirror, and a staircase that expands and contracts without warning. When she is sixteen she meets and falls in love with Daniel, whose mother Eva becomes the driving force of the novel. Eva dominates and manipulates everyone in her life, and her anger is manifested as a swarm of bees. Meridia and Eva spend the book locked in a b ...more

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So did anyone esle find this book hard to read?	2	28	Oct 03, 2020 03:49AM
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About Erick Setiawan

Erick Setiawan

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ERICK SETIAWAN was born in 1975 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. A quiet, shy child, he was thankfully raised in a family of gifted storytellers, who taught him that while life might have an endless supply of conflict, not all of it translates into a good story. Due to the anti-Chinese sentiment prevalent in Indonesia, his childhood was often fraught with tension, which prompted him to t ERICK SETIAWAN was born in 1975 in Jakarta, Indonesia, to Chinese parents. A quiet, shy child, he was thankfully raised in a family of gifted storytellers, who taught him that while life might have an endless supply of conflict, not all of it translates into a good story. Due to the anti-Chinese sentiment prevalent in Indonesia, his childhood was often fraught with tension, which prompted him to take comfort in books and in the world of his imagination. To traumatize him further, his parents sent him to Catholic schools, where he learned from an early age to feel guilty about everything and that a grown man in a sash and a swishing robe with a ruler in his hand was in no way maternal.

At age sixteen, he left his family and moved to the United States. He knew three people and barely spoke English, yet was somehow convinced that he could compete with the top students to get into the best colleges. His resolution/delusion pushed him to work hard. The following year, his first choice, Harvard, rejected him, but fortunately Stanford had a lower standard. To this day, he believes that they admitted him by mistake.

In college, he wanted to study English, but his shyness and insecurity about his adopted language prevented him from enrolling in classes that required him to speak. Instead, he chose to major in Psychology and Computer Science, going as far as getting a Master’s in the latter. Bafflingly enough, studying about mental disorders and complex algorithms only increased his hunger for literature. Once too often, he shuffled aside his term papers and problem sets to lose himself in a novel.

After graduation, he began his tenure as a software engineer in San Francisco. By the end of the first year, he knew that his heart was not in it. Confronted with the risk of being a corporate burnout at twenty-six, he turned to writing in his spare time. To the exasperation of his bosses, he began coming to work late and taking longer and longer lunch breaks in order to write. Several years, two failed novels, and countless short stories later, he decided to quit his job to finish writing OF BEES AND MIST. At the time, he had no book deal and knew no one in publishing, but he pursued his passion with the same stubborn resolution/delusion that had motivated him earlier. He sold OF BEES AND MIST four years after he started it. ...more