Rachel Joyce
Fiction 2020 | 353 pages
For a while I thought I was reading something that was a joke, tongue in cheek, or maybe designed for a younger audience. And then Miss Benson’s Beetle fell into place. And it kept getting better and better.
Margery Benson, 46, is a London school teacher by occupation, but an entomologist in her heart and soul. One day she walks out of the classroom and chooses to do what she has wanted to do since she was a young girl, and her father taught her all about beetles. She decides to travel to New Caledonia, where scientists believe there is a species of beetle than no one has ever seen. It is a golden beetle.
The year is 1950. Travel to New Caledonia will take six weeks, mostly by ship. Margery knows she needs an assistant to help her on this expedition, and she goes in search. She finally finds Enid, who is not at all the person Margery had in mind.
Margery is intellectual, introverted, serious, frumpy, overweight, a planner and strategist with one suitcase and one box of species-collecting supplies. Enid, 26, is very high energy, vivacious, sexual, a risk-taker, an extreme extrovert, doesn’t have a passport, didn’t get her vaccinations. She dresses loudly and has died her hair yellow. She tries to maneuver her four suitcases. She steals things. Clearly, there are going to be challenges in this relationship.
And there are. But at some point, the characters and the reader realize this book isn’t about beetles, it is about the deep, abiding friendship Margery and Enid build. They arrive in New Caledonia, and Miss Benson’s Beetle just gets better with every page. Nearing the end, it becomes a page turner.
The book is fun, but also quite insightful. Not only is it a powerful statement on friendship, it also portrays a strong picture of what it is like to be a professional woman in 1950, and what travel is like 75 years ago.
I recommend this book for a fun read and for a read that will speak to your heart.
Thank you to Pam for this gift to me when I was unwell.
September 2025