Honeycomb by Joanne Harris
(Gollancz, 2021)
Reviewed by Estelle Roberts
“There is a story the bees used to tell, which makes it hard to disbelieve”. Thus begins the latest book by Joanne Harris, a beguiling interwoven narrative, which could be novels broken down into short stories, or short stories which combine to form larger entities. I suspect it is up to the reader to decide which.
The stories themselves range from the romantic to the political, and from the fantastic to the extremely unnerving. There are newer twists on older themes. An Orwellian farm thread has the talking animals acting out and reacting to 21st century political and social situations, and it is extremely effective. Another has a mediocre marketplace singer raised to dizzy heights by the patronage of the local ruler. The reaction of the local people will be familiar to anyone on social media, or those who read Heat magazine in a previous life. In similar vein, a gardener is pressurised to remove the walls of a beautiful garden he has created, and praise soon turns to vilification when he dares to protest about how the people are treating it and how demanding they are. They are to some extent modern morality tales, as many original folk tales were.
The majority of the stories are, however, based around a fantastical otherworld peopled by insects, arachnids, and other woodland bugs. The central character of these tales is the Lacewing King, a harsh, ruthless, and sometimes murderous, ruler, who for most of his life cares for no one but himself. Fascinated by the human world, his forays into it often cause harm to those he encounters, as is often the case when humans come into contact with the Faerie. A young woman falls in love with him and when he leaves her, she cuts off her own eyelids as she believes this will enable her to see him again. He does change through the course of the stories, and this is one of the main drivers of the narrative which runs through them.
The one person he does genuinely care for is his daughter, born from that doomed relationship. She is the driving force behind the positive changes in his personality. Known as the Barefoot Princess, she inherits her father’s curiosity and stubbornness, and travels without his permission to many worlds, including at one point, taking the Night Train to Hell. Indeed, one of the major characters is a human train driver who befriends her. He ends up driving the Night Train after its original driver’s disappearance, having first gambled with the Ruler of Hell. Her life later becomes entangled with that of the Lacewing King, but she is quietly strong enough and adventurous enough to survive all of this.
Harris’ characters are always interesting. Due to the nature of these stories, some have to be somewhat two dimensional, or purely representative of an idea or personality type. Those that are more developed, however, do draw in and interest the reader. Harris has, it seems, a good understanding of human nature, evident in this work as in her others.
The inspiration for many of the stories is clear, and probably intentionally so. The tale of a clockwork princess and the poor man who falls in love with her owes something to the Tales of Hoffman. George Orwell is obviously referenced in the farm-based tales, and those tales set in the insect otherworld are full of folklore traditions. The idea of a train to Hell has probably existed since shortly after the first locomotives appeared. However, because Harris puts her unique spin on these tropes, the stories have something new and different to say, they do not read as just another tale on the same theme.
Long term readers will, I am sure, enjoy this latest addition to the canon, and for anyone interested in reading her work for the first time, this would be an excellent place to begin.
Review from BSFA Review 15 - Download your copy here.