Review of Rachel Joyce’s “Miss Benson's Beetle”: Embracing the Warmth of Solidarity
Review of Rachel Joyce’s “Miss Benson's Beetle”: Embracing the Warmth of Solidarity
by Simone Gulliver
Miss Benson’s Beetle begins in the whimsical manner you might expect from any new piece of “feel-good-fiction.” Summer drapes itself across the British countryside. Margery Benson, a starry-eyed twelve-year-old, pores over a journal of cryptids with the father she adores. Hearts warmed, we drink in sunrays and turn the page.
Moments later, however, adored father Mr. Benson shoots himself through the head. It’s a jarring twist and one that sets the tone for the rest of Rachel Joyce’s curious novel.
This offbeat period piece unfolds beneath the smoggy haze of a London “reeling from WWII.” Starry-eyed Margery Benson is now a spinster with a life as grey and unremarkable as the smokestacks of her surroundings. In the aftermath of a nervous breakdown, she vacates her job as a domestic science teacher to pursue her childhood dreams of capturing the elusive Golden Beetle of New Caledonia. With her bubbly assistant Enid Pretty (who is, I’m sure, a dead ringer for Kristin Chenoweth), Benson abandons her native London to embark on a three-month journey of self-discovery, companionship, and eclectic wonder along the shores of the South Pacific.
At the heart of this adventure novel lies an ode to a genre often excluded from the world of literary greats: the female friendship story.
At the heart of this adventure novel lies an ode to a genre often excluded from the world of literary greats: the female friendship story. Benson and Pretty cling to one another with a tenderness that highlights everything solidarity could be if we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable with each other. Author Ann Napolitano writes, “This novel made me realize how hungry I am for stories about women loving each other into being their best selves.” There’s something both remarkable and quietly mundane in the way these overlooked women dare to define themselves as extraordinary in a world desperate to deny them such a title.
This friendship story is further complicated through Joyce’s ambitious perspective jumping. Benson battles for narrative control with antagonist Mr. Mundic, whose eerie moments of interiority occasionally overtake her own. Both characters are equipped with salient voices, and Joyce switches between their worldviews with ease. Benson’s sharp wit and quiet determination serve as the novel’s grounding force, stabilizing readers as she engages in a tumultuous battle against her own self-loathing. Mr. Mundic, on the other hand, radiates a tortured version of Benson’s aloofness, offering readers a glimpse at the dangerous person Benson may very well become if she allows herself to give in to her own bitterness.
Joyce grapples with themes of isolation, disillusionment, and cultural confusion in the post-war era, adding a sinister tinge to a story that seeks to establish itself as something more than just “touching.”
Joyce is sleek in her emotional maneuvering, balancing gloomy introspection with a wealth of uplifting moments. But despite the story’s upbeat nature, she’s careful to never veer too far into sentimental territory. As shown through Harry Benson’s suicide, there’s an undercurrent of darkness running beneath the novel’s warmer tones. No character is left untouched by the atrocities of decades prior. Joyce grapples with themes of isolation, disillusionment, and cultural confusion in the post-war era, adding a sinister tinge to a story that seeks to establish itself as something more than just “touching.”
Perhaps Miss Benson’s Beetle is predictable in the way that any “Up Lit” story is predictable. Quests are embarked on, new selves discovered, horizons broadened in spectacular bursts of technicolor. But Joyce’s clever storytelling breathes new life into a genre plagued by accusations of shallowness. While Margery quietly rebels against 50s patriarchy, Joyce wages a battle of her own. “Feel-good fiction,” she argues, can be radical. Margery’s fate is uncertain. But Joyce has clearly won.
MISS BENSON’S BEETLE
By Rachel Joyce
368 pp. Penguin Random House. $18.00.
Order here.
Simone Gulliver is a sophomore at The University of Chicago, where she studies creative writing. She writes to tell the stories she could never find growing up: those of brown girls, past, present, and future, daring to claim their spot in the world. Her fiction has received national honors through the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and appears in their 2018 Best Teen Writing anthology. She’s an alumna of the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio, a creative writing instructor at Spells Writing Lab, and the recipient of her high school’s Brogan Memorial Scholarship for expertise in the art of written expression. She’s currently a staff writer for the University of Chicago’s Blacklight Magazine, where she works to amplify the voices of black creatives. When she’s not writing, she loves conducting historical research and working with children. She can be reached at sgulliver@uchicago.edu.