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Day of the Bees: A Novel, by Thomas Sanchez
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Day of the Bees celebrates passion and creativity as it explores the links between love and violence, art and war, and reveals the sacrifices made for love?of person and country.
An American art historian is seeking to discover why the famous painter Zermano abandoned his beautiful muse Louise during World War II. Visiting Louise?s cottage in Provence after her death, the scholar finds letters that carry across a panoramic landscape of fifty years and piece together a tempestuous affair with tragic conclusions.
- Sales Rank: #3586033 in Books
- Published on: 2001-07-10
- Released on: 2001-07-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 7.98" h x .69" w x 5.18" l, .60 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 320 pages
Amazon.com Review
The narrator of Thomas Sanchez's fourth novel teaches art history in America, but he dreams of Europe--or more specifically, of Spain. The Professor (as he identifies himself) specializes in a Spanish painter of the 1940s, Francisco Zermano, to whom he has devoted a spate of scholarly articles. He also spends hours staring at the man's paintings, trying to imagine the stories behind them. This iconographic detective is particularly curious about one bit of recurrent imagery: the body of a beautiful woman, which is rumored to belong to Louise Collard, the painter's muse.
As Day of the Bees opens, in fact, Louise has just died alone in a small provincial village, and the Professor rushes to France to learn more about her role in Zermano's life. There he finds a pile of correspondence--and a revelation. According to legend, the artist treated Louise cruelly and abandoned her. Yet the letters reveal a deep and doomed love, one which is forever shattered when Louise is raped by a platoon of enemy soldiers (whom she later describes in her letters as "bees," a wonderfully eerie motif). Zermano, already beaten with a tire iron, is forced to watch the entire event. Here Louise recalls how the rape ruined her life, and its paradoxical resemblance to the redemption of true erotic love: I have discovered something unnerving--that a woman in sexual ecstasy with her man forgets all detail; when it's over she wants to return and explore this abyss that still makes her tremble. The same thing can happen when she is raped, but for a different reason. Where joy once deleted memory, horror now destroys it. In two acts in her life can a woman lose all consciousness: in the act of lovemaking, and in rape, its cruel parody. After discovering Louise's letters, many of them never sent, the Professor embarks on a search for the aging Zermano, hoping to help set the record straight. In these chapters, the violent and tragic love story at the heart of Day of the Bees is nicely counterbalanced by an obsessive academic's comedy of errors. Like most of his kind, the narrator is late for trains, professorial to the bitter end, and devoted to (in every sense of the word) ghosts. --Emily White
From Publishers Weekly
Sanchez has done notable work (Rabbit Boss and Mile High), but this novel about a world-famous painter and his love blighted by war is not quite thought through. For a start, much of it is told in epistolary form, which is always tricky to manage, since a novelist's gifts of narration, here employed at full stretch, are profoundly different from what anyone would be likely to write in a letter. Then, too, the machinery of having an art history professor unearth the letters and tell the story through them is overly familiar, so that although there are moments of genuine power in Sanchez's tale, it feels for much of its course labored and manufactured. Francisco Zermano, a dynamic Spanish-born painter (rather obviously modeled on Picasso, even down to his colossal American car), has a French lover, Louise. When the Nazis invade France, the pair are separated, Louise burying herself in Vichy France and eventually becoming deeply involved in the Resistance, Zermano in uneasy exile from her in occupied Paris. Most of the story is told in a series of Louise's (unposted) letters to him, describing their early days together, a horrific encounter with a German officer who raped her after shattering Zermano's knees, and then her pregnancy, her wartime sufferings and heroism, the loss of her baby and her eternal, death-transcending love for the painter. Finally, the narrator who found her letters takes them to the great man's solitary exile in Mallorca and has his daughter read them to him. After one more revelation, the story ends on a wistful note. Sanchez evokes the immemorial Proven?al landscape exquisitely, and some of the mutual passion of Louise and Zermano comes across powerfully, but the Resistance scenes and the mysterious beekeeper who gives the book part of its title are melodramatic in concept and execution.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Sanchez's fourth book (e.g., Mile Zero) is a mixture of epistolary, third-person, and first-person narrative and is thematically reminiscent of A.S. Byatt's Possession (LJ 11/1/90), though it never quite reaches that high artistic level. On the day after Louise Collard's effects have been auctioned at her home in a small French town, an art critic arrives, seeking insight into the life and work of Collard's husband, the painter Francisco Zermano. There he stumbles onto a cache of letters that truly illuminates their relationship: a passion based to an extent on bondage and minor involvement with the Resistance during World War II. Some of the book's images are striking, including the eponymous "day," in which a beekeeper puts an end to a brutal gang-rape by attracting a swarm of bees, and the final scene, when the scholar finally meets the reclusive Zermano. Though the letters between Collard and Zermano are not always compelling, the novel's ambition and writing style often are. Recommended.
-Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York, New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
Rich, Poetic Darkness
By A Customer
As this novel opens, Louise Collard, reputedly the famous model and lover of the great Spanish painter Francisco Zermano, has died in a small Provencal town. Lured by the promise of an auction of Louise's own private collection of Zermanos, and even more by curiosity about the reclusive Louise herself, the art world descends en masse on Provence.
Day of the Bess is narrated by an American art history professor who has devoted much of his professional life to the study of Zermano. Arriving in France, the narrator hopes to find a clue that will help him unravel the mystery of Louise and Zermano since it appears as though this once-beautiful woman was cruelly abandoned by the man who had loved her so passionately in the countryside of occupied France during World War II.
The Professor (as he is always identified) arrives at Louise's remote country home long after the auction is concluded (yes, he does possess the stereotypical absent-mind) only to be told that nothing remains but a few worthless knitting baskets. The professor, apparently believing that something is better than nothing, gladly accepts them.
The baskets, however, contain something more interesting than any painting could ever be and something that is, perhaps, even more valuable. Concealed in a secret opening are bundles of letters written by Zermano to Louise, as well as letters from Louise to Zermano that had never been sent. The beautiful and enigmatic Louise apparently had not been quite as abandoned by her lover as the public seems to have thought and, as the professor reads the lovers' pained and passionate words he begins to piece together the mystery of their relationship.
Day of the Bees is a story told through the letters of these doomed lovers, set against the backdrop of war-torn France. This is, above all, an emotional story and a mystery of the heart. The war, too, becomes a major character as it impacts the lives and future of both Louise and Zermano.
Although some have compared Day of the Bees to The Bridges of Madison County, I think it deserves far more than that. The Bridges of Madison County was sentimental drivel, and poorly-written sentimental drivel at that, while Day of the Bees is beautifully and poetically written. It reminds me more of The English Patient than anything else, although it is highly original and of course, unique. The character of Zermano seems to be modeled after Pablo Picasso, although, of course, Zermano is not based on Picasso. This story is fiction, not fact.
It gives nothing of the plot away to say that Zermano left Louise for reasons he considered valid even though she begged him not to go. Still madly in love with his mistress, however, Zermano never gives up writing to Louise. Her apparent silence pains him immensely.
Louise, as we learn, has lost none of her passion for Zermano. It is through her beautiful and poetic letters that we learn of the genesis of their doomed, but undying, love and the violence and danger that forced them to separate, a danger that will stalk Louise for the rest of her life. And, although the politics of World War II do play a part in this book, this is not a political story.
From the book's first page we know that the lovers never reunite and that Louise manages to survive the war, but this is still a mystery of the most profound kind, a mystery of the relationship between two people who love each other to their very core, a mystery concerning the shadows cast by the actions we take or fail to take, the choices we make (and perhaps later regret) and the forces that impose themselves on our lives against our will. This is the shadow world in which Louise Collard lives and it is in the portrayal of this shadow world that Day of the Bees truly excels.
As a woman who has lived most of her life in the countryside of Provence, I can attest to the genuineness of Sanchez's portrayal and his detail of setting. His language is rich and emotional and poetic. The passion shared by Louise and Zermano is vibrantly alive and absolutely riveting. Some of the book's best scenes, whether those portraying the savagery of war or the passion of sexuality are so original and haunting they are almost surreal.
Some readers may find the letters, themselves, a problem. They can be poetic in the extreme and sometimes this poetry threatens to overwhelm the actual novel and the story of Louise and Zermano. But deep, abiding love and intense sexual passion are poetic; I, myself, had no problem with the letters. In fact, I found them gorgeous. Louise's letters, in particular, are one of the strongest parts of Day of the Bees. Many male readers, and readers who prefer a little less passion, might find this book somewhat overly-lyrical, though.
The ending is not at all surprising but it is not a letdown, either. Sanchez's touches of humor and whimsy regarding the character of the professor are aptly-placed and never intruding. This is Louise's story, rather than Zermano's and, if anything, I wanted to know more about this fascinating woman and why she made the choices she did.
This is definitely a character-driven novel and those looking for a swiftly-moving plot will be sorely disappointed. If you're looking for a book about love and passion, a rich, multi-layered story of lyrical and poetic darkness, you couldn't possibly do better than this.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful.
Glorious tale of passionate love
By A Customer
A sweeping tale of passionate love set during the turbulent events of WW2 and spanning 50 years.
Zermano world renowned Spanish painter and his beautiful French lover Louise Collard were separated during the Nazi occupation of France. The world thought Zermano had tired of Louise, she who had once fired his inspiration for his paintings and his lust. In the end it was Louise who left the legacy and Louise who led the way. After her death intimate letters written by her to Zermano, but never posted were accidentally found. They recount the period during the war when she and Zermano were separated, when unspeakable horrors and cruelties abounded in war torn Europe.
Passionate, beautifully written letters describe the love between Zermano and Louise and recount Louise's life during their enforced separation.
This is not a soppy love story, but a powerfully, deeply moving and well written historical tale of two tragic lovers, touched with passion, politics and art. A wonderful book I didn't want it to end and which I highly recommend.
7 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Pretentious and unoriginal
By Menelaos
Like many other readers, I picked the book after reading the promising blurb, and the beautiful cover. Elements such as the French Resistance, the fiery passion of an artist and a mysterious, seclusive woman, secrets lost in the past all seemed very intriguing.
Well, this book has nothing to offer. It is actually so forgettable and full of cliche that the reader feels as if he/she has received an undeserved slap in the face.
Most of it is in the format of letters, which however are also foolish, since it is as if the characters are retelling their story without any personal views on it, so don't expect much.
As for the French Resistance theme it is a small part of the book, and without many if any historical elements and the role the characters play didn't captivate me at all.
Art... Where, exactly? Why does it matter that the male character is a painter? What is the significance of his being an artist?
No answer.
There are some pretentiously lyrical sexual scenes, which serve practically no purpose and most of the text actually has that supposedly lyrical and poetic edge to it.
If you'd like to read a truly beautiful story with themes of art and love in it, then I highly recommend "Possession: A Romance", by A.S.Byatt
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