The Murmur of Bees

By: Sofía Segovia / Translated By: Simon Bruni / Narrated By: Xe Sands, Angelo Di Loreto

Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins

Absolutely beautiful translation of a gorgeous piece of literary fiction

I often watched my mom translating concepts in English into Spanish when I was but a little girl, and she showed me just how tricky that can be. Things can be translated quite literally, or their essence, their flavor can come through in various different ways, tricks with wording, with phrasing. That’s why I HEARtily applaud Simon Bruni for his truly masterful translation of The Murmur of Bees. Y’all know how I’m not the most patient, the most appreciative of listeners when it comes to literary fiction; I want a point, I want decisions, I expect tension!

I want a lot of things and okay, this audiobook doesn’t have all of the above, and I mean, seriously: Don’t expect ANY of that. Rather, it has lush and beeeeautiful prose, a sense of place so real that you feel the cold, the heat, the crushing weight of a body that’s crumpled on top of you. Author Sofía Segovia captures all of that without sacrificing emotion. Cuz, if you’re not going to satisfy any of my other expectations? At least make me feeeel something.

And I did with this audiobook, very much so. It opens with the discovery of an infant with a cleft palate, covered in a living blanket of bees. A couple takes him in, and the community comes to see him as their son, or Godson at any rate. He doesn’t speak, and he is forever followed by masses of bees that he can communicate with. All his life he’ll be able to do this. The story is of his life, but it’s also the story of a Lion and of a Coyote—destined to meet eye-to-eye, one destined to defeat, completely and absolutely, the other. To destroy the other.

I thought Xe Sands was a truly odd choice as one of the main narrators, as she’s nowhere NEAR Mexican. And the story is set on a farm/orchard in Mexico during the Spanish Flu and with the Mexican Revolution as a backdrop. But it turns out there’s a reason she’s one of my favorite narrators. She manages mostly the main narrative beautifully. She rarely attempts to feign an accent, only going for a slight one for dialogue instead of turning wonderfully fleshed-out characters into gross “Mexican” caricatures. Angelo Di Loreto, on the other hand, does the first person narration for the couple’s late-in-life surprise son. And he, ya better believe it, has the smooth and even rhythm of an older Mexican gentleman telling a tale to an interested cab driver (Which is indeed how his narrative is set up). They both do sooo well with all of it, managing a complex dance between first person, third person, and a free-floating omniscient deftly and with ease. And yes: With emotion! I couldn’t have been more happily surprised by the pairing.

14 hours can feel like a long book, especially with nothing much going on except for people growing up, growing older, trying to live during extremely troubled times, times of deep unease and unrest. Francisco, the father, tries to hold onto his land tho’ it can be taken from him at any moment. And you never know when somebody is just going to up and disappear. But I must say, this 14 hours pretty much flew along for me as I came to know and love the characters, as I came to appreciate the mystical sprinkled throughout, as I came to savor the wonders of wording, the strangeness of situations.

Okay, okay, okay. So ‘twould appear I actually can comport myself with some respectability when around literary fiction. Whoulda thunk it?

But really! Have I mentioned anything about the translation?!?