The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia: book review

The Murmur of Bees (2015, English translation 2019) is set in rural Nuevo Leon, near Monterrey in Mexico, from 1910 to the 1930s against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the flu pandemic that killed thousands.

Under a bridge, old Nana Reja finds an abandoned baby, disfigured, ‘as horrible as he may be’ and covered with bees. Beatriz and Francisco Morales adopt him, and name him Simonopio, but everyone calls him Bee Boy, because bees follow him and protect him.

Kissed by the devil, the local say, Simonopio arrives into a family with two older, beautiful, sisters, kissed by the angels, called Carmen and Consuelo.

In October 1918, for three months, when Simonopio is ten years old, the flu kills many people, and the villagers blame Bee Boy. Simonopio too gets the fever, but ‘one minute he was motionless, burning up; the next it was as if the last fews days of unconsciousness and convulsions had never happened.’

Simonopio masters the art of silence, and grows to have great talents: he can see the future. What is he going to do with this talent? Is he going to break his silence? And when does he help others and when does he not?

The story is partly narrated in his old age by Francisco Junior, born in 1923, the youngest son of Beatriz and Francisco, and partly written in the third person.

This is the tale of mysterious powers that have the ability to change families, and people’s lives – and that of the nation.

The novel is lengthy, moving like bees, sometimes slowly and sometimes with direct purpose and focus, and sometimes with a sting in its tail.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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