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Since her 2012 bestselling debut The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce has specialised in stories about overlooked people jolted out of their routines into unexpected situations that allow them to face the buried griefs that have kept them trapped in small lives. She might almost be credited with inspiring the recently popular “ up lit” genre, but it would be a mistake to think of her novels as merely “heartwarming”, though the word is frequently attached to them. Joyce has a clear-eyed, unsparing view of regret, failure and loss, and the cost that life exacts from so many, even while she counters it with a belief in the resilience of the human spirit and the possibility of second chances. This review was written voluntarily and my rating was in no way influenced by the fact that I received a complimentary digital copy of this novel from Dial Press/Random House Publishing Group via NetGalley. It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist—the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind. Fun-loving Enid Pretty in her tight-fitting pink suit and pom-pom sandals seems to attract trouble wherever she goes. But together these two British women find themselves drawn into a cross-ocean adventure that exceeds all expectations and delivers something neither of them expected to find: the transformative power of friendship. Enid and Margery drive up north to the bungalow which will be their home during their stay. They start their expedition on the mountain. Their goal is to gradually cut a path to the top, where golden beetles can supposedly be found amongst some orchids. The expedition takes weeks. The two women bond over time. Enid confesses that her husband was gay. Margery tells her she was in love with an older man, Professor Smith, who broke her heart. Enid tells Margery that she is still pregnant. Margery tries to get her to rest but Enid refuses to stop looking for the beetle. They finally reach the top of the mountain, but no beetles are to be found.
I absolutely loved this book from its early scenes of Marjorie failing to control her classroom to its very satisfying conclusion years later. I would like to see this as a TV series but it would probably be too expensive to produce.
About Fictionophile
London, 1914. Ten year old Margery doesn’t share her father’s love for insects until he introduces her to the golden beetle of New Caledonia. No one has found and cataloged it yet. So it may or may not exist. The story really starts in 1914 when her father is showing her a book called “Incredible Creatures”. There were so many curiosities in this book, Margery could not get enough of it. But the creature that she is most captivated with is the golden beetle of New Caledonia. The reader doesn’t really know if all of these creatures really exist, but in Margery’s mind she had already decided that someday she would see this golden beetle. If you’ve been longing for a book about fully realized women helping one another grow through kindness and acceptance, this “happy” book with a lot of depth is exactly what you need. Both women (and Mr. Mundic) have been influenced and informed by past traumas, and though their friendship feels inevitable, the journey there is an absolute riot.
The two attract a menacing character, who is sad more than evil. He’s a POW from WWII, and Joyce does a fabulous job of reminding the reader of the horrors of war, both economicly and emotionally. This character adds a dramatic feel. Miss Benson's Beetle attracted me for being suitably different from the rest of Rachel Joyce's work: much of it takes place on the high seas or in New Caledonia rather than in England, and it is about two unlikely female adventurers who become dear friends as they chase their dreams in the early 1950s. Margery Benson reminded me of Olive Kitteridge: a larger, older woman who doesn't say or do what she's expected to. Her lingering childhood fascination with a (possibly legendary) golden beetle spurs her to, in her mid-forties, leave her home ec teacher job in disgrace and plan an expedition to a French-run island halfway across the world. Enid Pretty, the twentysomething blonde bombshell who signs on as her field assistant at the last minute, is running from her past and desperate to have a baby. I’m just saying, I was not really expecting you to come all the way to the center of the Pacific. You’ve been so stodgy, so, well, mediocre, I didn’t think you had it in you. But you did make me laugh when you made that mad exit from the school where you were teaching. You were a bad ass, doing something totally unlike you, and I was stunned and laughing. Go, Margery, go!
About the Book
In 1914 London, when Margery is ten years old, she loses her father, four brothers, and her home, all at the same time. Margery and her mother go to live with her extremely religious, pessimistic, spinster aunts. Margery's mother and aunts never speak of what happened in the past, with Margery's mother spending all her time sitting in a chair. Margery is obsessed with beetles and researches and studies them seriously until her late twenties, when she has another great loss in her life. Thus starts a twenty year lonely, drudgery as a school teacher where she is bullied and made fun of, by students and teachers alike, just as she was treated in her younger days. Margery is tall, large boned and heavy and invisible except when people decide to make fun of her looks. Finally, after more abuse by her students, Margery marches out of the school where she taught, a pair of purloined boots under her arm, and realizes she is now free to travel to New Caledonia, to search for the golden beetle, the obsession of her younger days.
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