Book review: Gill Hornby’s “The Hive”

The Hive

By Gill Hornby, Little, Brown, 320 pages, £12.99

Yet another debut novel landed on my desk. I attempted puppy dog eyes at my editor. She smiled in a sage manner and said that she understood my struggle but it had to be done.

In a desultory manner, I flipped through the 306-pager with a strange blue digital print cover. “The Hive” — great, a metaphorical exploration about bees and their industrious little lives. A line in bold font declared: “There’s only room for one queen bee.” As a sigh escaped, I caught the last name of the author, Gill Hornby. Could she be, I wondered?

A quick walk through the World Wide Web and her brother’s name was thrown up — Nick Hornby. Aha! Now it gets interesting. He’s quite the master of what has been labelled as “lad lit”. I didn’t come up with the term, but a close enough description. His writing is fun and I really liked “About A Boy”, which was made into a movie with Hugh Grant. And she’s married to Robert Harris, author of “Enigma” and “The Ghost”. Should this reflect on her as a writer?

In an ideal world, everything should be based completely on merit. An unbiased perspective is a tough task, ask any ethno centrist. So, to be honest, my expectations did rise.

The book is metaphorical but it is placed within the environs of St Ambrose Primary School, with the “lunching mothers” as its protagonists. It is a world far removed from the average Joe existence of most people where I live, the Middle East. However, the characters and their emotional responses would find resonance with people in most societies.

The pompous, manipulative leader, rather subtly called “Bee” and her workers — the eager to please, not wanting to be left out, desperate to be popular drones that do her bidding. And then arrives another queen, the result is a bitter but amusing power struggle.

There are definite moments in the book when I could almost identify Bee or Beatrice as a familiar but that might be true for many readers. Suffice to say, just desserts are served and there is a happy ending.

I enjoyed the read and it raised smiles.