{"id":5660,"date":"2024-04-12T07:10:19","date_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5660"},"modified":"2024-04-12T07:10:19","modified_gmt":"2024-04-12T14:10:19","slug":"the-beekeepers-apprentice-30-years-of-reading-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/the-beekeepers-apprentice-30-years-of-reading-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: 30 years of reading magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Every writer of historical mystery fiction writes in the shadow of Ellis Peters<\/a>, whose first Brother Cadfael novel was published in 1975, and Elizabeth Peters<\/a>, whose first Amelia Peabody novel was published the same year.\u00a0 Elizabeth Peters, an incredibly influential figure, created not only the historical cozy-slash-adventure novel, she also foregrounded a woman as the central figure.\u00a0 Anne Perry\u2019s first Pitt novel was published in 1979.\u00a0 There was, in other words, a cluster of work, a zeitgeist.\u00a0 This pop zeitgeist worked it\u2019s way through mystery fiction for the next 20 or so years, and with the publication of The Beekeeper\u2019s Apprentice <\/em>in 1994, Laurie R.King upended the historical mystery genre once again. Once again there was a cluster of novels written around the same time \u2013 Sharan Newman<\/a>\u2019s Death Comes as Epiphany <\/em>(1993), Margaret Frazer<\/a>\u2019s The Novice\u2019s Tale <\/em>(1992) and Candace Robb<\/a>\u2019s The Apothecary Rose <\/em>(1993) \u2013 all of which featured, as King\u2019s novel does, a woman at the center of the action.<\/p>\n

Newman\u2019s Catherine LeVendeur is especially groundbreaking as she portrays the life of a nun living under the care of Abbess Heloise (of Heloise and Abelard fame) who eventually breaks with the religious life to marry.\u00a0 King brought this idea of a female protagonist into more of the popular culture realm with her introduction of Sherlock Holmes as one of the central characters.\u00a0 I love Newman\u2019s work, but a medieval setting appeals to a much smaller audience than Holmes does.\u00a0 He\u2019s the entry ticket to this glorious series, which really follows a young woman\u2019s coming of age.<\/p>\n

Laurie King is nothing if not the master of the set up.\u00a0 Every novel of hers, from Beekeeper\u2019s <\/em>to A Grave Talent <\/em><\/a>(the first Kate Martinelli) to her recent, brilliant standalone, Back to the Garden<\/a>,<\/em> has a set up that grabs your attention immediately. The set up for Beekeeper\u2019s<\/em> outshines all of them, however.\u00a0 In it a young woman, Mary Russell, is walking across the Sussex Downs in the year 1914 when she quite literally stumbles over Sherlock Holmes, who is busy tracking bees.\u00a0 He\u2019s older and ruder and yet has an intelligence which answers Russell\u2019s own.\u00a0 She\u2019s living in the care of a disliked aunt and the opportunity to find some intellectual stimulation via Holmes, as well as the care of Mrs. Hudson, who feeds Mary up and loves her like the 15 year old girl she is, is too much for her to pass up.<\/p>\n

While Russell comes to the page fully alive, it\u2019s Holmes that King breathes fresh life into.\u00a0 Yes, his brain is there, his deduction skills \u2013 shared by Russell \u2013 his violin playing, his beekeeping, his love of chess.\u00a0 But under King\u2019s pen he assumes a humanity not quite granted to him by his creator. He is a good mentor and teacher to Russell, and nurtures her skills as an investigator.\u00a0 King gently introduces the detection side of things \u2013 first with a seemingly simple case of suspected poisoning.\u00a0 In this case, Russell is an assistant though she certainly contributes.\u00a0 Then there\u2019s the kidnapping of a young girl.\u00a0 In this case, Russell is close to a partner and in fact resolves it through her own bold action.\u00a0 The penultimate case involves Russell, Holmes, Watson and Mycroft and has all the Victorian attributes of adventure, intrigue and uncomfortable travel.<\/p>\n

Watson is introduced gently.\u00a0 Russell initially thinks of him as a bumbling figure but she grows to love him.\u00a0 While he\u2019s never the intellectual equal of Holmes, as Russell is, he is never the less kind and loyal. As everyone ages these qualities are discovered to be of massive importance, and in the book, Holmes is in his mid-50\u2019s at the start, fully of an age to appreciate these qualities.\u00a0 Russell learns to love him, coming to think of him as Uncle John. Mycroft is introduced when he provides Holmes and Russell with a safe hideaway, providing an intelligence task as well which takes them conveniently out of the country as they are pursued by a lethal and clever foe.<\/p>\n

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Laurie R. King<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

All of these story elements are so masterfully handled by King that the story becomes a graceful adjunct to her exploration of Russell\u2019s growth throughout the book.\u00a0 Mary attends Oxford and finds her intellectual passions (theology is one, perhaps because King herself has a degree in theology), and she finds herself on a growing level of equality with Holmes as a detective and as an intellect, and in the ultimate denouement of this first novel, they must rely completely on each other, trusting each other to proceed in an intelligent manner.\u00a0 And while the Holmes stories are entertaining and clever, I\u2019m pretty sure they never made anyone tear up.\u00a0 King has this gift.\u00a0 She presents these two characters so completely in every way that when they are affected and damaged by the events in the novel, it\u2019s hard to read without your heart in your throat as two real friends \u2013 and King has fully laid out the details of that friendship \u2013 grapple with reality, loss, and triumph.\u00a0 This is a beautiful, magical book, a book that changed what came next, and is still an utter reading pleasure. — Robin Agnew<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Join us on zoom Sunday, May 5 at 2 p.m. when Laurie King herself joins our book club to discuss\u00a0The Beekeeper’s Apprentice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>All are welcome.\u00a0 Email us at store (at) auntagathas.com for a zoom link.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every writer of historical mystery fiction writes in the shadow of Ellis Peters, whose first Brother Cadfael novel was published in 1975, and Elizabeth Peters, whose first Amelia Peabody novel was published the same year.\u00a0 Elizabeth Peters, an incredibly influential figure, created not only the historical cozy-slash-adventure novel, she also foregrounded a woman as the … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1658,1020,1560,450,1562],"class_list":["post-5660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","tag-30-year-anniversary","tag-laurie-r-king","tag-mary-russell","tag-sherlock-holmes","tag-the-beekeepers-apprentice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5660"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5665,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5660\/revisions\/5665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}