“Miss Benson’s Beetle” - Rachel Joyce

 🪲 If ever there was an underdog heroine to root for, Margery Benson is unequivocally it. We first meet Margery, in a joyful moment when she discovers her horizons are full of limitless possibility, only to see it all drain out of her in the very next moment. We next meet Margery when, after a life of drudgery, she’s finally had it and resolves to take matters into her own hands. The scene where Margery experiences her last straw, was *chef’s kiss*.

🪲 Joyce is a true talent who can combine gritty realism and ephemeral magic into a single, cohesive narrative that never feels like it’s veered off into excessively fantastical land. Miss Benson’s determined wellies are as ever firmly on the ground though she is in actuality, on a quest of sorts. Margery is convinced that the one thing that will make her life worth living, is a sense of purpose. Enid, a sassy anti-Margery, foists herself upon the unwilling Margery as her assistant. Enid is obviously running away from something. Both women ultimately find what they are searching for, though it isn’t at all what either expected (though I suspect that world-wise Enid caught on before our intrepid heroine did).

🪲 I appreciated the closing of the loop that Joyce gives us in the form of a black-and-white photograph of two women naturalists. The historical perspective of the 1950s - just coming off the devastation of WW II - was fascinating. The colonial politics of the New Caledonian British wives brigade was another interesting dimension of the times.

🪲 Margery’s moment of revelation in “Miss Benson’s Beetle” can be read below. The New Caledonian golden beetle was only rumored to exist, but she felt empowered to go and find it. This becomes the “vocation” she is actually seeking; the beetle is of course a metaphor for finding purpose.

🪲 I loved this book and cannot recommend it enough!