A Country Year: Living the Questions [Paperback]

Sue Hubbell (Author), Darhansoff Verrill & Feldman Literary Agents (Draft Writer)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 1999

When her thirty-year marriage broke up, Sue Hubbell found herself alone and broke on a small Ozarks farm. Keeping bees, she found solace in the natural world. She began to write, challenging herself to tell the absolute truth about her life and the things that she cared about. The result is one of the best-loved books ever written about life on the land, about a woman finding her way in middle age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An invasion of spring peepers, a young indigo bunting at song practice, a parade of caterpillarsthese are integral parts of Hubbell's environment. She lives alone on a 100-acre farm in the Ozarks, where she tends 200 beehives and produces honey on a commercial scale. In a series of exquisite vignettes she takes us into her world, and a life attuned to nature. Hubbell's busiest season is late summer, when she harvests the honey. Then she needs help for the backbreaking labor ("a strong young man who is not afraid of being stung"). She tells how she desensitizes her helper to bee stings; there is a vivid description of a day in the beeyard at harvest time. We meet her dogs and cats, her neighbors; travel with her when she sells the honey; share the pleasures of observing wildlife. Some of these delightful pieces have appeared in the "Hers" column of the New York Times and in Country Journal. Illustrations. First serial to Harper's.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal

YA Hubbell, a former librarian and now a commercial beekeeper, lives on a peninsula between two rivers in the Ozark Mountains. Her quiet reflections are arranged by seasons, beginning and ending with the spring. Most of the short chapters include an attractive pen-and-ink sketch of the insect, plant, or little animal, etc., that is the major subject of the essay. Through a map of her farm and the lovely prose descriptions of the natural settings that she has had around her for the past 12 years, readers gain a pleasant picture of the countryside. This is a book for those who enjoy natural history and the questions that arise from it. Rain, snow, and mud; countless harbingers of each season; and Hubbell's bees and how they fare all make fascinating reading for anyone who appreciates the beauties and intricacies of the natural world.Mary Wadsworth Sucher, Baltimore County Reading Services
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; 1st Mariner Books Ed edition (April 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395967015
• ISBN-13: 978-0395967010
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57,329 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #21 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural History
  • #66 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Essays

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A quiet, thoughtful, and often very funny book, January 22, 2005

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Country Year: Living the Questions (Paperback)

When Sue Hubbell's long-term marriage fell apart, and she found herself in mid-life living alone as a beekeeper on a farm in the Ozarks. Her book is ostensibly set within a single year, but that's only the framework for the series of essays that form a beautiful chronicle of the seasons of one's life, the seasons of nature, the seasons of tame and wild animals, and the seasons of living on a farm.
Her inquiring mind constantly asks "Why?" questions, and the essays are her attempts to answer them. She's a former librarian, so she's articulate, academic, intellectual - but also quietly hilarious, such as her description of trying to think like a chicken in order to coax her hens to sleep inside the coop instead of perched on the trees.
Buy a copy for yourself, and buy one for your best woman friend who is heading into her middle years and may also be Living the Questions.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lyrically written memoir about country life and its charms, April 14, 2003

By 

Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Country Year: Living the Questions (Paperback)

Sue Hubble is an excellent writer; you can feel the hot Ozark sun and hear the hypnotic murmur of her bees, the bright slash of a bunting's song and share her wonder at the joys and challenges in country life.

If you aspire to memoir writing, this is a fine example of the craft. If you want walk in someone else's footsteps for a few hundred pages, learn how they live and how they think and feel about everyday things and about nature, this is for you.

I love this book.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bee-keeper tells all, and tells it well., August 14, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: A Country Year: Living the Questions (Audio Cassette)

I almost didn't buy the audiocassette of this book because of the reviewer who said Sue Hubbell's reading was monotonous. I bought it anyway, and am thrilled to say both the content and the reading were outstanding. To my mind, the author's voice, in any tone, beats an inauthentic performance. This is one of the best works on contemporary nonfiction by women - and one of the best books on tape - I have come across in a long while. I recommend it highly, for anyone interested in how the human mind makes connections between her immediate surroundings and the larger questions of living in the world. The "bee" theme, like Thoreau's ants and Annie Dillard's creek creatures, is simply a fascinating and concrete set of phenomena through which Hubbell examines the mystical world around her, and around us all. (One last note of interest: the audiocassette - comprised of only one tape - includes a second tape on which Gary Snyder reads from his work on nature and the problem of logging in the northwest of the U.S.).