The Bee-Loud Glade
by Steve Himmer
Atticus Books, 2011
ISBN 978-0984510580, 224 pp., $14.95

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

(The Lake of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats)

"Given my chance to be spotted, I chose to hide in the scrub. I gave in to the same habit of disappearing that brought me here in the first place, but this time—unlike the last—I have something worth keeping to lose."

Who hasn’t ever dreamed of disappearing, of ditching the tedium of the work-a-day treadmill, of not taking the exit home but rather, driving north until the highway ends? As Assistant to the Director of Brand Awareness, Finch’s job at Second Nature Modern Greenery is to create blogs populated by imaginary people, pretense for product placement. Presented with his pink slip, Finch realizes the aimlessness of his life to date. He deletes all traces of his virtual life and removes his one personal item, a desk-top fountain.

"When I had finished erasing my online tracks, I lifted the fountain in both hands and wove through the cubicle maze toward the exit, trailing a dark thread of water across gray industrial carpet. As I walked to my car, I smiled to think that the trail, too, would vanish within a few minutes, and I would go back to being forgotten.”

Finch holes up in his apartment pondering his next move and wallowing in ennui. He orders out and watches nature shows on television. Bills go unpaid. He sketches out the suicides of his blog characters. Days and nights blur. Then one night Finch receives an anonymous email requesting his interest in a position for "daydreamers and introverts." He responds with a single word: yes.

Thus begins his employ as the resident garden hermit under Mr. Crane, an eccentric tycoon. Finch takes a vow of silence, wears a sack-cloth, and lives in a manufactured cave with catered meals. The perfect life of solitude in paradise, monitored by Crane and his hidden cameras.

The Bee-Loud Glade is a lush tale, futuristic yet at the same time conveying a yearning for simpler times. The failing economy and looming war in the outside world provide a tense backdrop against which the story in the garden unfolds. We sense Crane profits from financial dealings related to the war, but like Crane himself, these details remain shady.

Finch is best described as Kozinksi meets Thoreau. Finch’s observations, his very situation, reminds one of Chance, the enigmatic gardener in Jerzy Kozinski’s Being There, down to both characters referring to an "Old Man." Yet when Finch narrates the garden, the surrounding sky and river, the passage of seasons, he elicits Thoreau and his contemplations of the woods and waters of New England. For instance, when Crane directs Finch’s actions by presenting him with paints, brushes, and an easel, Finch spends much of the day agonizing what to paint.

“My first chosen mushrooms were the color of clouds, not cotton-white clouds but creamier ones, clouds when there’s going to be or has been a storm and the sky isn’t gray but it isn’t blue, either. That kind of cloud. That kind of mushroom."

Gorgeously written, told with straight-forward prose, The Bee-Loud Glade is a story for the reader—and the writer. Himmer weaves a tale about solitude and community, about silence and communication, and the need for balance to make a life worth living. Anyone who takes time to settle in with this small treasure will come away with a sense of sadness for the busy-ness with which we stuff our modern lives, as well as yearning for a quieter, slower world, one to spend pondering a mushroom or a cloud, one to disappear and, for at least some time, be forgotten. —Linda Simoni-Wastila