The Death of a Beekeeper: Novel

by Lars Gustafsson

Book Overview

In the beginning of the winter thaw, Lars Lennart Westin has learned that he has cancer and will not live through spring. Told through the journals of this schoolteacher turned apiarist, The Death of a Beekeeper, is his gentle, courageous, and sometimes comic meditation on living with pain. Westin has refused to surrender the time left him to the impersonation of a hospital, preferring to take his fate upon himself, to continue solitary, reflective...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0811208109
• ISBN13: 9780811208109
• Release Date: November 1981
• Publisher: New Directions Publishing Corporation
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

The Art of Dying

The author cleverly uses a series of notebooks in this existential exploration of death. From the initial diagnosis to the apparent end, the reader journeys through the beekeeper's life through a series of reflections and painful ruminations in the present. While avoiding his reality, the beekeeper discovers the joys and sorrows of his journey in an exploration of the self. The book begins with an explanation of the notebooks. This is helpful to the reader's understanding the flow of the book. Before his death, the beekeeper kept notes in three notebooks. These notebooks are arranged in a way that tells the beekeeper's story. The author tells his story beginning with adolesence and continuing with a failed marriage, an abandon teaching career, and new life as a beekeeper. While many of his thoughts are enlightening, no role is more important to the book than his being a "beekeeper". Particularly in seeing the death of bees and their ruination, we seen the beekeeper's true insight to life as his body and profession wither. On many levels, "The Death of a Beekeeper" is a clever book. Yet on some levels, the storyteller holds back too much. Perhaps the author's sense of realism in writing this book prevented him from revealing too much. As well written as it is, the reader can not help but wonder what more there is.

Beautiful

Lyrical, spare, captivating. Think you won't care about a Swedish beekeeper dying of cancer? Guess again. Gustafsson makes his narrator's world our world, and when we're faced with losing it, we do care.

Incredible Book!

As the previous reviewer said, this book is a very powerful story of a man trying to deal with cancer and at times can make you cry, but also laugh. Lars's descriptive powers are incredible. There is one part where a friend of his dives to the bottom of deep stream, and by the end of the chapter, I could feel the cold and wet of the stream. Overall excellent book- HIGHLY RECCOMENDED!!!

a great book/

when i took the book from the library i thoght it would be a real burden. I think it's the best book i have ever read and I really recommend it.The story is so sad but contains some of the greatest qotes ever. Lars is a great author that can really reach out and grab you- sometimes when you least expect it and sometimes he can really make you cry.