Review of MISS BENSON'S BEETLE by Rachel Joyce (New Release)

 3.5 Stars

Most of the novel is set in 1950.  Margery Benson, a 46-year-old spinster schoolteacher, abandons her job in a dramatic way after a humiliating experience.  On a whim, she decides to travel to New Caledonia to find the legendary golden beetle her father had told her about just before his sudden death.  When left with no other option, Margery hires Enid Pretty as her assistant.  Enid has none of the qualifications Margery wanted but in the course of their adventures, the two unlikely companions forge a strong friendship.

Some of the interest in the novel is that the two women are foil characters.  Margery is plain, frumpish, introverted, and judgmental whereas Enid is attractive, flamboyant, extroverted, and undiscriminating.  At the beginning, Margery hates Enid’s company; on the 5-week, transoceanic voyage, Margery feels “stuck in a very small space with the world’s most talkative woman.”  It takes a while for Margery to realize that there is more to Enid than appearances suggest; she proves to have skills that the ill-prepared Margery needs and even if Enid is chatty, she has secrets. 

Though the purpose of the journey is to find a (perhaps mythical) gold flower beetle, it is really a journey of self-discovery.  Margery feels like a misfit in society:  “She would always be on the outside.”  Her life is dull and boring because “It was so easy to find yourself doing the things in life you weren’t passionate about, to stick with them even when you didn’t want them and they hurt.”  Enid tells her, “’Just because you’ve never done  something doesn’t mean you can’t start’” and Margery comes to realize that it’s not too late for a second chance:  she had “the strangest sense that everything she wanted was ahead and available, so long as she was brave enough to claim it.”  She finds unknown reserves of endurance and courage.  She sees the wisdom of Enid’s comment that “’We are not the things that happened to us.  We can be what we like.’”

In many ways, the novel is about female empowerment.  Margery finds happiness when she realizes, “I’m not here because I am someone’s wife or sister.  I am here because this is what I want, and now I have a place for my work.”  In fact, Margery and Enid become objects of resentment for one woman because “they had found a way to be themselves.”  And the novel ends with a final comment that “the real failure as a woman was not even to try.”

This is an adventure story; the women face many obstacles:  some like passport photos and lost luggage are minor, but others like cyclones and illnesses are life-threatening.  Some of the adventures are improbable and almost slapstick, requiring some suspension of disbelief. 

On the other hand, serious topics are addressed:  homosexuality, suicide, and sexual abuse.  Certainly the lasting effects of war are highlighted.  Margery is haunted by what happened to her family during World War I.  Another character was a prisoner of war in Burma during World War II; suffering with PTSD, he thinks, “war was not over just because someone signed a truce.  It was inside him.  And when a thing like war was inside you, it never left.” 

This book would make an entertaining movie.  It has some wonderful touches of humour (Enid calling Margery “Marge as if she was a highly processed alternative to butter”) and farcical adventures (setting up a tent for the first time) but also a heart-warming message about friendship and second chances.  Though not perfect, with some pacing issues in the middle, the book is a good read for pandemic times when we need “moments of joy.  [Fortunately] even at its worst, life will offer such moments,” and this book provides some of these. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.  This book will be published tomorrow.