In [The Bumblebee Flies Anyway], a story that is as trenchant as it is poignant, Cormier shows the courage and desperation of adolescents who know that their deaths are imminent. Barney, sixteen, is the only patient who is in the experimental hospital who is not in the group of the doomed but is there as a control: all of them are there voluntarily, some to contribute to research and some, like Mazzo, hoping for a quick death…. Barney thinks of a plan that will give Mazzo the quick, daring death he w...

With the grimmest of subjects Cormier has written his most affirmative novel [The Bumblebee Flies Anyway]…. The book has some serious flaws, notably in the depiction of Cassie, who we are told is "vibrant and compelling," but who remains an abstraction. But this is a fine novel, even better on rereading, with a startling poetry in the simplest phrases. Young adults will be caught up in the terrifying thriller, the scientific facts about memory, the controversial issue of medical ethics....

What's a person to say? He's done it again. Cormier is Cormier. [The Bumblebee Flies Anyway] is consistent with his other successes by focusing on the struggle between individuals and an institution. Institutions are dehumanizing, but humans do not succumb easily—or necessarily. While the larger theme is unchanged, he has forced us to think in yet another arena, for the battle we see here involves the medical establishment. Yet it would be a disservice to suggest that Bumblebee is an ex...

Subtle foreshadowing and well-crafted metaphors and similes [in The Bumblebee Flies Anyway] enable readers to mentally visualize setting, action, and characters; and there is a rhythm to Cormier's writing that compels reader reaction much the way a musical score underlines emotion in films. The story's climactic blockbuster is marred only slightly by a double denouement—one weak, the other fitting. The depressing situation aside, the overall effect is one of a reaffirmation of the human...