Highly recommended to those who enjoy eccentric characters learning to like themselves, and their world, just a little bit better. Well-rendered, literary, humourous, uplit. This wonderful novel is set to publish on November 24, 2020 and I can’t wait to share it with EVERYONE! We could feel the heat, the exhaustion, the defeat, the struggles, the hunger [Spam with curry powder wasn’t doing it]…. In the present moment of the novel, Margery is a lonely spinster. She teaches at an elementary school but hates her job. One day, the kids pass around a note making fun of her. Margery quits and steals the school deputy’s pair of boots. She is determined to pursue her lifelong dream of finding the golden beetle. Trying NOT to repeat the plot - the obvious descriptions that many of the early reviewers have done (but early reviewers get my special thanks as they are the first reviewers taking on the responsibility of describing those important details that allow readers to know ‘enough’ about the book - whether or not to choose it for themselves)….

There are quirky characters in this story that at times seemed far fetched. BUT - these are characters who touched my heart and had me rooting them all the way. Margery Benson suffered a traumatic experience as a ten year old and then in her twenties, a big disappointment. She leads a lonely, secluded life without friends and an unsatisfying career as a home economics teacher. A gold beetle in a place far from London that doesn’t exist until it’s found, according to her father, is what Margery Benson has been thinking about for years and wants to find. However, she must travel to New Caledonia, thousands of miles away to find it. She seeks an assistant and the unlikely candidate ends up being one she had not chosen. Enid Pretty has dreams of her own and a desire to escape the sad circumstances of her own life. This oddball pair embark on a journey to New Caledonia each chasing their dream, but end up with so much more. A third character, Mundic, a disturbed POW is inserted in the story. While he adds some drama and danger, I thought the story would have worked fine without him.In 1950, 47 year old, frumpy spinster Miss Margery Benson walks out of her job as a domestic science teacher, after being humiliated by her students and decides she is going to follow her childhood dream of finding a rare beetle in the wilds of New Caledonia. Accompanying her, as the most unlikely of companions, is the young and attractive Enid Pretty. It was lovely to read the inspiration that led Rachel Joyce to write this engrossing story. I was amazed too at the amount of research that went into writing a story where a golden beetle held center stage. She experienced the dense feeling.....as if she was always on the other side of a flawed glass wall and seeing the truth way after it was too late.' Rachel Joyce: I didn't know that Mr.Mundic was going to be in this book. I set out with the intention of writing a purely female book. And all Mr.Mundic had to do was turn up briefly in his interview for the job as Margery's assistant, and then leave. But I couldn't leave him alone. I kept writing his scene, over and over, and it got longer and longer. Much too long for a 'bit' part.

I am NOT a bug lover ( understatement of the year). This book has ascertained that Rachel Joyce is an author whom I will always read, no matter the subject matter, as she has proven that she can capture my attention with her brilliant characters. I don’t think I had this much adventurous escape enjoyment other than in the beginning (first 10%), when I was in bed-‘feeling-lousy’- and tired of feeling weak….. The two attract a menacing character, who is sad more than evil. He’s a POW from WWII, and Joyce does a fabulous job of reminding the reader of the horrors of war, both economicly and emotionally. This character adds a dramatic feel.Rachel Joyce weaves an emotionally moving, magical, offbeat historical adventure novel set in the 1950s, a post-war drab and colourless Britain of shortages and rationing, of two widely different women that appear to have little that could possibly connect them, embarking on a entomological trip in search of the mythic rumoured golden beetle in the Grande Terre, and the New Caledonia archipelago. The large 47 year old Marjery Benson is an unmarried woman working as a teacher, her shoes falling apart, a constant target of her class, until one humiliation too many has her walking out, taking with her the stolen boots of the deputy head. When she was 10 years old in 1914, her beloved father sparked a life long passion, an obsession for etymology, beetles in particular, more accurately the elusive golden beetle. However, that day is a bitter, tragic and despairing memory as news of the loss of Archibald, Hugh, Howard and Matthew, all her brothers, proves to be too much for her father as he commits suicide.

Don’t miss this one! Marialyce and I have had a string of disappointing reads and dnf’s but this is the first fiction book in a while that we both loved. What is more perfect than to read a book about friendship with a friend?Rachel Joyce: I am working pretty non-stop on the screenplays - but I feel that a new book is beginning to follow me. I know it wants me to write it. I read because books are a form of transportation, of teaching, and of connection! Books take us to places we’ve never been, they teach us about our world, and they help us to understand human experience.” However, I’d heard so many positive things about Miss Benson’s Beetle that I decided to Q: What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing? What would be your own advice for new writers? Years later at age 46, having weathered personal losses and suffered humiliation at the hands of her students, Miss Benson quit her job as a domestic science teacher and decided to leave London in search of the Golden Beetle of New Caldedonia. The year is 1950. No one knows if such a beetle exists. All Margery had is a vague notion it may be found in a red mountain where the white orchids grow in a far-flung wilderness at the other end of the world. Nature lover that I am, I trudged along with nary a suspicion that it would turn out to be one of the wildest vicarious globe-trotting experiences.

Thank you #NetGalley @RandomHouse for a complimentary e ARC of #MissBensonsBeetle at my request. All opinions are my own.

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I am confused. Did I read the same story as the majority of readers? I hate to be an unkind person, but I never really understood Miss Benson's Beetle. Margery puts an ad in the newspaper for an assistant. She interviews a war veteran, Mr Mundic, who is clearly unhinged. Mr Mundic becomes Margery’s stalker. She finally decides on an assistant, but then they quit at the last minute. Margery’s last resort is Enid Pretty. Margery dislikes her at once. We jump ahead decades. Margery is in her early 40s now, plodding along in a life that she doesn’t like and never wanted. She is teaching home economics to a bunch of ungrateful students. Everyone has their breaking point and one day everything is just too much for Magery; the after-war bleakness of England, the gloomy rainy days, the continued rationing and the hurtful, ungrateful kids. She walks out of that life and soon into a new one. Defying all the odds, they embark on their madcap journey and endure many hardships and dangers along the way. Their adventure is zany enough to require the reader to suspend some disbelief, which is not easy for me, but in this case the characters won me over. However, it’s not all fun and games, as there are some darker elements at play. Miss Benson's Beetle is a pure joyride. Sweet, witty, poignant, filled with intrigue and unlikely friendship, it's a perfect escape. I loved it." - Lisa Wingate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Before We Were Yours and The Book of Lost Friends