Francisco feared that his land and wealth were under siege in the wake of the Agrarian Reform. He decided to invest more in his land, which included purchasing a tractor. Simonopio finally reached the bees’ desired destination, returning with orange blossoms for Francisco. Francisco seized the moment, deciding to transform his lands into orange orchards. Eventually, the government would exclude orchards from being taken. Simonopio not only helped Francisco choose and transport his new orange trees, he also revealed to Beatriz that she was pregnant. Once Francisco Junior was born, Simonopio dedicated himself to the baby. In the meantime, Espiricueta grew even more resentful, making friends with nomadic agrarians camping in the area. Por otra parte, si bien el personaje principal es entrañable también es cierto que tiene características que, sin considerar su magia, terminan siendo un conjunto de servilismo, mudez, sometimiento, discapacidad, espera, etc., su fuerza radica solamente en la parte mágica por lo que considero que, nuevamente es un elemento en el que se sigue estereotipando a través de la romantización de estas características los roles de las personas que forman parte de una familia sin realmente serlo ya que aunque en el libro se usa la palabra adopción para aludir a cómo pasa a formar parte de la familia del hacendado Francisco y Beatriz, pero lo que realmente pareciera es más que lo acogen, pues no goza de los mismos privilegios de la familia y pasa a ser una especie de empleado más al que se le estima mucho pero que pareciera que en respuesta tiene que sentir agradecimiento y adoptar un comportamiento y características como las que ya he mencionado para retribuir lo que la familia le ha dado. Sin olvidar que además no se intentó explicar ni si quiera desde la magia o la fantasía algo relacionado a su origen más allá de su aparición (pareciera que espontánea) en el monte, así como tampoco de su final (o más bien su abandono) y cómo terminaron su vida y la de la nana Reja. En esto último considero que al ser el personaje principal se merecía un desarrollo más en esos aspectos. Una narrativa que atrapa y una historia muy interesante. Me gustó mucho leer una historia que se ubica en la región norte de México porque al vivir aquí la sentí muy cercana, a pesar de que se desarrolla durante la época de la Revolución Mexicana. Sofía loves to travel but lives and writes surrounded by the mountains of her hometown, Monterrey, Mexico, with her family (close and extended), the Frenchie Amélie, the Brussels Griffon Leeloo Dallas, and Mika the Exotic Short Hair cat.

As you might recall from the book blurb, Simonopio is disfigured. He does not speak much. But when Francisco is born, the two share a language. Francisco understands what Simonopio is saying and he becomes an interpreter. Mood board for The Murmur of Bees On Intuition This book tells the story of the Morales family living through the influenza, Mexican Revolution, and the Great Depression. On the surface, the Morales family is portrayed as kind, benevolent, hardworking, deeply devout Catholics who are trying to survive many hardships and hold onto their land. In reality, The Morales were a wealthy, light-skinned privileged family with many means and resources to avoid the tragedies that were striking many poor and indigenous communities. I will give specifics from the book to demonstrate this, but I think it’s important to understand a little bit about the history of Mexico first.How do you tell your own stories? Does a story you share about your day over the dinner table or to a colleague during a break differ in style from a story you might tell on a long drive? When do you think about aging? Do you remember jumping higher than necessary without knowing how you would land or what consequences there would be? Do you remember when you stopped doing that? Are there other actions that you stopped doing as you have aged? Do you recall when was the last time you performed some of those actions? Death

Descriptions of landscape are something the book could use more of to pull together the cornfields, orange groves, towns glimpsed from train windows, caves, slopes, and canyons. These settings are included but not detailed in the ways that would provide a sense of this place as a whole. This may be more an issue for American readers than for Mexican ones, who, perhaps, take this area of northeastern Mexico for granted geographically. Vox shares 11 questions you’re too embarrassed to ask about magical realism, which provides a good launching point to discuss magical realism.Other books to consider to delve into memory include Educated a Memoir and The Trouble with Goats and Sheep. Secrets I re-wrote my review for this because my first review just didn’t do it justice. I’m not sure this one will either, but this story by Sofia Segovia, and translated by Simon Bruni, is wonderful and deserves some extra love.***

Simonopio and Francisco Junior have a very special bond. They are practically brothers. Simonopio knows that he is different from other people and it was interesting to read him imparting other knowledge to Francisco Junior, knowledge that other people just don’t listen for. Their relationship is another beautiful aspect of this book. He would have liked to discuss his bees and ask everyone why they didn’t hear them, given that they spoke to the others, too, as they did to him. Had he been able, he would have talked about the song the bees sang into his willing ear about flowers on the mountain, far away encounters, and friends that had not made it on the long journey home; about the sun that would beat down hard one day but be covered in storm clouds the next.” I struggled with how Simonopio is supposed to be so grateful that this wealthy family took him in. He shouldn’t complain or want for something better. In the end, Simonopio asks his bees to sacrifice their lives trying to save Sr. Morales and Francisco Junior.One morning an elderly, mute woman named Nana Reja hears cries that no one else can hear and discovers a baby with a cleft palate abandoned under a bridge protectively covered from head to toe in bees. Having lost her own baby boy long ago, she takes this unusual child to the home of wealthy Mexican landowner Francisco Morales, whose father Guillermo she was a nursemaid for. Francisco and his wife Beatriz adopt this boy, Simonopio, as their godchild, and over time discover that, though he can’t speak intelligibly, he has visions, can understand messages from the bees, and has an intuitive knowledge of the future. Set primarily in Linares, Mexico, this is part historical fiction, dealing with the Mexican Revolution and the impact of questionable agrarian law reform on landowners like Francisco. This sets the stage for a major conflict with one of Francisco’s increasingly bitter and ambitious sharecroppers, Espiricueta, who feels he deserves more and despises Simonopio as cursed by the devil. It’s also part magical realism, as Simonopio’s gifts come into play throughout the events of the story to protect not only Francisco and Beatriz, but their two older daughters and a charming young son, Francisco, Jr. - whose complicated journey to adulthood develops over the second half of the story, and to whom Simonopio is particularly close. Mercedes Garza was the first in Linares to die of Spanish flu, but her funeral spread the infection. Soon, many people died of the infection each day. One boy survived the illness, and while the townspeople wished to believe in his miraculous resurrection, his recovery at least brought hope of a future after the pandemic. Simonopio’s unrelated illness kept the Morales family away from Mercedes’s funeral. Once the outbreak began, Francisco quarantined his family and workers on La Amistad and later La Florida. Only Espiriceta’s family was left behind; he sent his wife to Linares and put them at risk. Soon, Espiricueta lost his pregnant wife and four of six children to the infection. Espiricueta, a transplant from the South in search of land for the taking, resented Francisco. He believed that Francisco would give him land, not make him an employee. Over the years, that resentment grew and expanded to include Simonopio. What did you know about that pandemic before reading the novel? What did you learn or feel reading the historical fiction account of the pandemic in Linares? Did you find any parallels to Covid-19? Life Gifts