Of Bees and Mist - Erick Setiawan

Erick Setiawan’s debut novel is a fabulous creation - an intense family melodrama set within a dark gothic fantasy world. Within this magical world Meridia’s life experience has been shaped by the deep rift that has always lain between her father and mother, a rift expressed in the coldness emanating from the house around them, dark mists that lap at the door to whisk her father off to his mistress, the vengeful ghost of his mother’s bitterness and anger battering at the door and appearing in the mirrors of the house.

Then, at a fairground of wonderful sideshows and spiritualists offering their services, Meridia meets Daniel and the dark world she has known is transformed into something lighter and more magical. However, as she and Daniel overcome the obstacles to start their life together, Meridia finds the ominous mists of her youth replaced by an even more menacing threat; the bees spewed out by her mother-in-law, Eva.

At heart, Of Bees and Mist is a big family melodrama of dark family secrets and disputes, but the bitterness is so deep and violent that it has to be expressed in terms of magic realism that owes as much to Tim Burton as it does to Isabel Allende or Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Setiawan keeps the drama grounded in the reality of human behaviour and interaction, expressing with minute detail and observation every nuance of emotion, conflict and love, but converting it into magical terms of dark portentous omens and precious objects. In so doing he creates in Eva one of the most monstrous and unforgettable characters ever seen in literature - truly the Mother-in-Law from Hell - in a distinctive and utterly enthralling first novel.