An unusual tale of love and loss told through three different voices: a ten year old child, his mother and their doctor, Jean Markham, set in a little British village in the fifties.
Lydia, a beautiful young woman, is abandoned by her drunken husband being forced to struggle to raise her only child, Charlie. When she is in the verge of collapse, Jean, Charlie's doctor, enters their life like a miracle. She provides Charlie with a getaway in her huge garden and she lets him tend to the bees, a chore Charlie takes with a lot of enthusiasm. And she gives Lydia a reason to live again.
When the two women meet, they start an intense and unusual friendship, and unaware of its consequences, they cling to each other as drowning souls, not understanding what's really going on.
A story which tells a lot with no big fuss, about the real meaning of love and the courage it takes to face it, and about the intolerance of a closed up society in which different people are outcast and tortured for their "perverted ways".
The prose was really smart, even poetic sometimes, and although a bit unconnected, the story flowed easily and the characters came to life in every page. A touching story with a disinhibited message which will go straight to the heart of those with an open mind.