Telling the Bees and Other Stories

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

“When something had happened and you couldn’t talk about it to
anybody you went out into the garden and just spoke out aloud about it.
That was telling the bees and it was supposed to make you feel
better.”

All people must endure unbearable moments and emotions, and must face
the loss, pain, and death that are an inescapable part of life. We each
cope as best we can, some successfully, others less so, especially those
who have no one in whom they may confide.

In one of the stories in Telling the Bees, for example, a troubled
woman with a burdened conscience, not a Catholic, “tells the bees”
by making her first and only confession to a Catholic priest. The
troubles of others are revealed less by the protagonists’ own words or
actions than by the surgical delicacy with which the author lays bare
their secrets, in this sensitive collection that should and will be
remembered.