Here Is the Beehive
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A brilliantly original debut about a love affair cut short, and how lonely it is to live inside a secret -- for fans of Sally Rooney, Sheila Heti, and Ottessa Moshfegh.
Ana Kelly can deal with death. As an estate lawyer, an unfortunate part of her day-to-day is phone calls from the next of kin informing her that one of her clients has died. But nothing could have prepared Ana for the call from Rebecca Taylor, explaining in a strangely calm tone that her husband Connor was killed in an accident.
Ana had been having an affair with Connor for three years, keeping their love secret in hotel rooms, weekends away, and swiftly deleted text messages. Though consuming, they hide their love well, and nobody knows of their relationship except Mark, Connor's best friend.
Alone and undone, Ana seeks friendship with the person who she once thought of as her adversary and opposite, but who is now the only one who shares her pain -- Rebecca. As Ana becomes closer to her lover's widow, she is forced to reconcile painful truths about the affair, and the fickleness of love and desire.
Funny, frank, and strange, Sarah Crossan's moving novel is wholly original and deeply resonant.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Dealing with the sudden death of your significant other is guaranteed to be a nightmare, but imagine hearing the news from their spouse. Ana has been having an affair with Connor for three years when she gets a fateful call from his wife, Rebecca. Ana finds herself struggling not only with intense grief, but with the emotional weight of what her and Connor’s secret affair did to Rebecca’s marriage—and her own. An unexpected bond between the two women develops as they meet and become part of each other’s lives, realizing that they each shared something special and flawed with the man they’re laying to rest. Author Sarah Crossan tells this deeply emotive story entirely through beautifully spare poetic verse, adding incredible dimension to the reading experience as the novel cuts between Ana’s past tender moments with Connor and Rebecca’s present preparations for his funeral. Here Is the Beehive is a moving look at how an affair touches everyone involved, especially when it comes to an abrupt end.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Irish writer Crossan's beautifully written first adult novel (after the YA book Being Toffee), a married London lawyer and mother of two has an affair with her client, Connor Mooney, a married father of three. Ana finds her husband, Paul, to be "homely" and "compassionate," and feels unsatisfied in their marriage, which mostly consists of communicating by "grunts and nods." Ana and Connor meet up in hotel rooms when they can, but Ana wants more from the relationship; while she is willing to give up her family for Connor, he's hesitant to leave his wife. The three-year affair ends with Connor's death, the cause of which is initially kept from the reader. Ana hears the news from the unsuspecting Rebecca, who calls to inform Ana in her capacity as the lawyer of Connor's estate. Ana is devastated and unable to mourn her lover openly, and is left with nothing but a password-protected photograph of him on her computer. Then she secretly changes Connor's will and declares herself the executor, "so I could know your life and befriend your wife and keep you for a while." The book, structured in five parts, explores Ana's grief, guilt, and loss in stunning, spare lyrical prose, which appears like verse on the page as dialogue breaks into snippets of Ana's consciousness. Told from the point of view of a highly flawed Ana, this mesmerizing story will have readers hooked.
