The Boy Who Taught The Beekeeper To Read

'This is vintage Susan Hill, both in the little worlds she evokes and in her understanding of the relationships between children and adults' Books of the Year, SpectatorA young school boy visiting his aunt's country house finds company and friendship with the gentle beekeeper and begins teaching the man to read, so that it seems nothing can ever intrude upon their closeness. A young country girl fights against becoming a downtrodden domestic skivvy like her dead mother, while another young girl reaches a delicate understanding with an elderly blind man as they walk along the beach together. On another beach a more sinister plot unfolds as a gang of boys plans the most wicked deed.

“Hill can evoke a setting, convey the essence of a situation and let one see into the inmost hearts of her character in a paragraph or even a single sentence”

-- Francis King Spectator
Hill's sentences speak eloquently...the pleasure to be had from [these] stories lies in their carefulness: memories are exactly sustained, small gifts are valued, little words are listened to Guardian
Hill's stories evoke place, situation and complex emotions with enviable economy... Masterly Daily Mail
Simple and mesmeric prose Observer
These very strange, beautiful tales demonstrate a relentless capacity to surprise... The Boy Who Taught the Beekeeper to Read introduces many individual people who will continue to stare back at the reader long after the book is closed Times Literary Supplement

SUSAN HILL has been a professional writer for over fifty years. Her books have won awards and prizes including the Whitbread, the John Llewellyn Rhys and a Somerset Maugham, and have been shortlisted for the Booker. Her novels include Strange Meeting, I'm the King of the Castle, In the Springtime of the Year and The Mist in the Mirror. She has also published autobiographical works and collections of short stories as well as the Simon Serrailler series of crime novels. The play of her ghost story The Woman in Black is one of the longest running in the history of London's West End. In 2020 she was awarded a damehood (DBE) for services to literature. She has two adult daughters and lives in North Norfolk.

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