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Fiction Literary

The Beekeeper

by (author) Keith Henderson

illustrated by Normand Cousineau

Publisher
DC Books
Initial publish date
Aug 1990
Category
Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780919688216
    Publish Date
    Mar 1990
    List Price
    $17.95
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780919688223
    Publish Date
    Aug 1990
    List Price
    $32.95

Classroom Resources

Where to buy it

Out of print

This edition is not currently available in bookstores. Check your local library or search for used copies at Abebooks.

Description

Young, impressionable, twenty-year-old Walter Taylor flees his suburban home in search of freedom and adventure and stumbles into more than he bargained for. Set in a chaotic bee-farm at the height of the 1960s, home to a bohemian, European-born artist and his mistresses, The Beekeeper is filled with allusion, irony, and high humour, yet sets in stark relief the fund of violence and ignorance that underlay the romantic dreams of the 1960s.
Henderson has written a hilarious satirical portrait of the last generation's counter-culture movement, as well as an original and thought-provoking assessment that what produced this rebellion was to a large measure, transplanted European ideas originating not only in the last century but beyond.

About the authors

Keith Henderson has published five other novels with DC Books, The Restoration (1992), The Beekeeper (1990), The Roof Walkers (2013), Acqua Sacra (2016), and Sasquatch and the Green Sash (2018), political essays from when he was Quebec correspondent for the Financial Post (Staying Canadian,1997), as well as a prize-winning book of short stories, The Pagan Nuptials of Julia, 2006). He led the Equality Party during the separatist referendum of 1995, taught Canadian Literature at Vanier College for many years, has sat on numerous boards in Anglo-Quebec including ELAN and the AELAQ, and is currently President of The Special Committee for Canadian Unity. He is completing a critical autobiography with special focus on the works of Edith Wharton.

Keith Henderson's profile page

Normand Cousineau's profile page

Editorial Reviews

"Amusing ... sketches of some eccentric '60s intellectuals as they lounge in the Ontario countryside.... The characters are beautifully realized.... Henderson is hilarious when he's mocking the cerebral pretensions of the bohemian set."
— Books in Canada
"A roisterous jaunt through male envy.... "
— The Edmonton Journal
"Fast-paced and well written...[with many] interesting observations about the effect decadent European sensibilities had on the Canadian artistic landscape of the era."
— The Globe and Mail

“Amusing ... sketches of some eccentric ’60s intellectuals as they lounge in the Ontario countryside.... The characters are beautifully realized.... Henderson is hilarious when he’s mocking the cerebral pretensions of the bohemian set.”

— Books in Canada

“A roisterous jaunt through male envy.... ”

— The Edmonton Journal

“Fast-paced and well written...[with many] interesting observations about the effect decadent European sensibilities had on the Canadian artistic landscape of the era.”

— The Globe and Mail

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