Dear Molly,

            How are you? I just wanted to follow up to make sure you received the copy of Lisa O’Donnell’s novel, The Death of Bees (Harper Perennial; $14.99; Paperback; ISBN 13: 9780062209849; on-sale October 22, 2013), that I sent to you. This novel is not your typical run-of-the-mill coming of age story; O’Donnell brings us the tragic story of Marnie and Nelly and their struggles to survive in their messed up world. I truly hope you consider this title and author for review and interview. Please see the below release for even more information and praise.

Best,

Amanda

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:                                                                                                  Contact: Amanda Ainsworth

                                                            Assistant Publicist

212-207-6910

amanda.ainsworth@harpercollins.com

“Today is Christmas Eve.  Today is my birthday.  Today I am fifteen.  Today I buried my parents.”

When you read the opening line of Lisa O’Donnell’s debut novel THE DEATH OF BEES (Harper Perennial; $14.99; Paperback; ISBN 13: 9780062209849; on-sale October 22, 2013), you know you are in for something different.  You quickly learn that the parents buried in the

backyard are Izzy and Gene, parents of Marnie and Nelly – two neglectful, selfish, generally heinous adults now moldering beneath loosely planted stalks of lavender. But you do not know how they got there. Not yet. The girls intend to keep the deaths a secret. They know that once word gets out, Social Services will be knocking on their door, ready to separate Marnie from Nelly.  The girls both realize that Nelly, won’t survive, or will just barely, without Marnie looking out for her.

And so they go about their business. Their parents regularly took off, so no one bats an eye now. Except for their next-door neighbor, Lennie, an old man with a sad past, who believes they have been abandoned. Lennie takes them in – feeds them, clothes them, protects them – and something like a family forms.

But as months pass, people start asking tougher questions. Their friends, the authorities, and a long-absent grandfather, newly sober, who claims the girls are his for the taking are all asking questions. The girls realize it’s only a matter of time before the game is up.  When Lennie’s dog unearths a hand from the back garden, the whole truth must come out. And that means big, unwanted changes.

THE DEATH OF BEES is a novel of voices, ones that will utterly win you over. The narrative is composed of the first-person accounts of Marnie, Nelly, and Lennie.  Marnie is a brilliant, young cynic, who, despite her promise, has been swallowed up by a world of drinking, teen sex, and general irresponsibility. Nelly is the charmingly odd duck of the narrative; she is a twelve-year-old violin prodigy, proper to the point of being off-putting, who speaks like the Queen of England. Lennie provides a sober and wise adult perspective to the proceedings, but we can also sense the depths of his life’s sadness and regret. Together their voices tell the story of each other, of what young people are capable of on their own, of what young people absolutely need from adults in spite of their seeming independence.  Although the girls’ circumstances are grim from the beginning, there is much comic relief throughout, provided by delightfully sharp dialogue and a motley cast of secondary characters.

For more on Lisa O’Donnell, visit: http://authorlisaodonnell.com/; On Facebook, http://www.facebook.com/DOB1972 and Twitter: https://twitter.com/lisaodonnell72

THE DEATH OF BEES

By Lisa O’Donnell

Harper Perennial

ISBN 13: 9780062209856

$14.99; Paperback; 336 pages

On-sale: October 22, 2013

ALSO AVAILABLE IN THESE FORMATS:

Hardcover; ISBN 13: 9780062209849; $25.99
E-book; ISBN 13: 9780062209863; $20.99

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A Conversation with Lisa O’Donnell, author of THE DEATH OF BEES:

Q.: You started out as a screenwriter and won a couple of awards early on -- the Orange Screenwriting Prize in 2000 for The Wedding Gift, which, in the same year was nominated for the Dennis Potter New Screenwriters Award.  What made you shift gears towards writing fiction?

I worked in TV for a while but found myself working on other people’s ideas. I wanted to see my own stories come to life and though I considered novel writing I was a little afraid of the medium. It took me a long time to pluck up the courage to write something down and when I did I wrote:  “Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved”. These are the first words Marnie says in The Death of Bees. I must have looked at those words for about 6 months before I had Marnie say something else. I just wasn’t sure where I was going to place those words, in the context of a screenplay or a novel? I’m glad I chose a novel.

Q.: The voices of your two young protagonists, Marnie who is 15 and Nelly who is 12, seem completely authentic – their fears and joys are distinctly those of teenagers who’ve just buried their no-good, drug-addicted, alcoholic parents in the backyard of their Glasgow housing development.  How did you get inside their minds and hearts.

I knew them already. I am a social gleaner.  I listen to people with my eyes as well as my ears and I am fortunate enough to have known all kinds of people in my life, for better or worse. I have known poverty and the challenges that come with it and I have lived in environments where those challenges have affected the lives of others.

I knew many Marnie’s in my adolescence. I was always drawn to the kind of girl who holes herself up in a cloudy bathroom. I can’t deny I was afraid of these girls and I suppose another person might have run away from them, but I ran towards them. I wanted to know their stories and when they eventually confided in me I would hoard those secrets like a bag lady might. It was easy to write Marnie. It was like writing an old friend. When writing Nelly I just flipped Marnie upside down. They are bound together by love and secrets but if you look closely they are essentially the same person.

Q.: Where did the idea for The Death of Bees comes from?  Does any of the story come from your own experiences?

Living on the East Side of L.A I see the same level of poverty I experienced as a child during 80’s Thatcherism. I was in my car recently when I saw this little girl maybe about seven walking in front of her mother and pushing a stroller. The mother was also pushing a stroller and holding the hand of a small toddler, but it was the young girl that caught my attention. I thought to myself “ She’s a wee mother” which later translated in THE DEATH OF BEES as “Wee Maw” when referring to Marnie raising Nelly.

Later, my sister sent me a docudrama about families in Scotland living with drugs and poverty, and again, the maturity of the children immersed in such a heartbreaking situation struck a chord. One child in particular was talking to the journalist about a father who might not return with the groceries for the week and go on a “bender” instead. She worried about Welfare Services getting involved in her life again.

I wondered what the girl who waited for her father to return home with the groceries would do if she had had the money to go for the groceries herself, I wondered what she would do if it was in her power to get the electric bill paid, and what lengths she would go to in order to survive parents who had essentially vanished from her life. The thought then occurred to me that these children would be better off raising themselves. That’s when I came up with the idea of THE DEATH OF BEES and had two children bury their parents in the yard making them disappear forever, leaving the girls to their own devices.

Q.: It seems that in Marnie and Nelly’s world, the adults are the children and the children are the adults – the roles are switched.  Except for their neighbor Lennie who is a deeply flawed character with secrets of his own, there aren’t many real adult role models for the two girls. What were you trying to say here?  And how does this bode for Marnie and Nellie’s future?

It’s a sad truth but lots of children out there are left to take care of themselves and if you pay attention you’ll see it all around you. The sin is not paying attention. These children possess a level of maturity that’s almost obscene and it’s thrust upon them if they are to survive the abuses of the people who are supposed to take care of them, but I wanted these girls to survive it. I wanted to illuminate the reliance, the strength, and the character it requires to endure what these girls are put through. I created adults as a device to bring love and protection back in their lives but when I wrote their grandfather it was to illuminate how little they were willing to tolerate and to underline how strong these girls have become.

Q.: There’s a lot of humor in the book – readers will especially enjoy the scenes when Lennie’s dog keeps digging up the bones of the dead parents – did you have fun writing these scenes?  What other scenes and characters are your favorites?

In Macbeth to relieve tension Shakespeare creates comedy through the Porter. The dog is my Porter. I find people are more willing to pay attention to intense subject matter if they know they’re going to be relieved with a bit of humor. It would have been too bleak a story if I hadn’t peppered it with comedy. I like the scenes with the dog but I also enjoyed writing the scenes where Nelly and Marnie are burying their parents. That was comic to me and I got away with a lot, but at this stage of the material, though a grueling read, the reader knows that laughs are expected and forthcoming and give themselves permission to read on. 

Q.: You’ve moved from Scotland to Los Angeles – Have you been able to see fictional characters and settings more clearly from that distance? Has your writing life improved in any other ways?

I love the US and I love living in Los Angeles. It is a city awash with experience and everyone has a story here. I glean from people what I can, but I can’t shake the Scottish thing. It’s what I know best, I hear Scotland whenever I write. It’s where my second book is set and hope to look at themes that affect us all.

Q.: What’s next for you?

I come from a small island in Scotland where everyone knows everything about everyone and so I love the thought of things that are actually kept secret in a world like that. My next book will focus on a big secret having repercussions for everyone who keeps it.

Q.: Who have you discovered lately?

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce is a wonderfully vivid book full of charm and tenderness. It’s an amazing debut and I am looking forward to reading more from her in the future.  

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PRAISE FOR LISA O’DONNELL’S THE DEATH OF BEES:

http://news.wsiu.org/post/death-bees-captures-grim-gory-coming-age

*Interview with NPR – Weekend Edition*

http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2012/12/26/lisa-odonnell-death-of-bees-debut-novel/1780401/

*New Voices in USA Today*

“In this first novel she pulls off the unusual pairing of grisly and touching.”
 — New York Times

“The Death of Bees steadily draws you into its characters’ emotional lives.”
 — Financial Times

“O'Donnell ties her story together like a string of dark jewels….While each of the girls believe the other killed their father, the truth is more shattering. Characters unpeel their layers to show us the truths they've been hiding…Wild, witty and as funny as it is unsettling, "The Death of Bees" is really about both the strength of sisters, the sparkle of imagination and how even the most motley of half-lives can somehow coalesce into a shining whole.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“O’Donnell walks a fine line, describing appalling events without ever allowing the novel to lose its warm heart.  The plot hinges on oxymoron’s like a drug dealer with a heart of gold, but as a reader, I was so invested in the girls’ chance at happiness that I read right over such improbabilities.  ‘The Death of Bees’ is that rare thing: a family-values black comedy.”

—The Christian Science Monitor

“Lisa O’Donnell’s darkly comic and suspenseful novel moves in brief chapters among the points of views of the two girls…O’Donnell…populates the novel with an intriguing cast of characters…As a gothic novel and a psychological look at the effects of trauma, it had verve and nerve…O’Donnell knows how to keep a reader engaged, and her sympathy – and hope – for her characters tempers what could have been a sordid tale.”

¯The Columbus Dispatch

“O’Donnell’s finely drawn characters display the full palette of human flaws and potential. Told in the alternating voices of Marnie, Nelly, and Lennie, this beautifully written page-turner will have readers fretting about what will become of the girls.”

—Booklist, *Starred Review*

“The sisters and Lennie narrate alternating chapters, moving the story along at a fast clip....The difference between the sisters in terms of personality and maturity puts them at odds despite their shared fear of discovery. But their resilience suggests hope for their blighted lives.”

—Publishers Weekly, *Boxed Review*

“Quirky characters with distinct voices enliven this sometimes grim and often funny coming-of-age story in the vein of Karen Russell’s best seller Swamplandia! O’Donnell’s debut is sure to be a winner with adults and young adults alike.”

¯Library Journal

(OVER)

“From its first line to its last, The Death of Bees is unapologetically candid and heralds a brazen new voice in the literary world…. This is a dark and mordant novel, yet despite its fighting words, a tender heart beats deep at its center. Although undeniably bleak at times, Marnie and Nelly’s story is not devoid of hope and has much needed punches of humor throughout. The result is a riveting and rewarding read.”

¯Bookpage

“This is a mystery – but not the type you’ll spend the entire novel trying to fuss out.  It is the type of mystery that readers will grasp quickly, and wait for the characters to suss out…The author brilliantly paints the characters’ best traits through the eyes of the other characters, and their worst traits through their own voices. 4 Stars.”

—RT Book Reviews Magazine

“With a gritty but redemptive take on family and the price of secrets, O'Donnell's debut will be well-received by fans of mainstream literature and Scottish noir mysteries alike. Shelf Talker: A startlingly original debut about two young girls who must conceal the deaths of their lowlife parents in order to remain together.”

¯Shelf Awareness

“The Death of Bees is completely addictive. A beautiful and darkly funny story of two sisters building a fantasy within a nightmare.”

— Alison Espach, author of The Adults

“The most original and incredible piece of writing I’ve come across in years.”

— Helen Fitzgerald, author of Dead Lovely