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Bee Season

by Myla Goldberg (Goodreads Author)

3.49 of 5 stars 3.49 · rating details · 15,455 ratings · 1,136 reviews

Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: her autodidact father, Saul, absorbed in his study of Jewish mysticism; her brother, Aaron, the vessel of his father's spiritual ambitions; and her brilliant but distant lawyer-mom, Miriam. But when Eliza sweeps her school and district spelling bees in quick succession, Saul...more

Hardcover, 288 pages

Published May 2nd 2000 by DoubleDay (first published 2000)

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Oct 23, 2011 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: religion, judaism, fiction-usa-2000s

This book was masterfully written and extremely surprising. I picked it up off my roommate's shelf thinking, "Oh, this looks like a sweet little book about spelling bees." I don't even know where to begin in describing how wrong I was. That was one thing that made the book so stunning: it completely circumvented my expectations.

The story is complex, with overtones that are varyingly dark and bright and intriguing. I think you could have conversations for hours about the characters in this book-...more

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Jun 11, 2008 Sandy Thomson rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: no one

What a disturbed and messed up family..... religious obsession in any form, any religion, is warped and vile to my senses. The father here is so caught up in the pursuit of his 'perfect' view of Judaism and what behavior does or doesn't fit his picture, that he has totally failed to see that every member of his family is being damaged, by his obsession. He ignores his daughter in favor of training his son to fulfil his own (the father's) dreams, and then rejects his son in favor of his daughter...more

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Jun 22, 2007 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: spelling bee champs, kleptomaniacs, and all who seek enlightenment

This book is totally about my family and my childhood, except it was written by Myla Goldberg. (And I must admit it's more exciting and disturbing than my family or my childhood...for one, my only brush with Hare Krishna was at the Crazy Wisdom Tearoom in Ann Arbor, where they played a soundtrack that chanted "Hare, Hare, Hare Krishna" all day long. Great for grading papers.)

So yes, Bee Season is a great read (I devoured it in two hot-and-heavy days) and it makes some very groovy connections be...more

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Sep 17, 2011 rachel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own, jewish, 2011, nice-surprise

Sometimes when a person I've just met or a well-meaning family member talks about my future children, I stop to correct them. "Oh, no, I don't want kids," I say, laughing breezily to lighten this very personal revelation. This answer garners one of two responses, neither of which are very polite. Either my conversation partner will look at me with eyes of wisdom and upraised chin and say, "You're young, you'll change your mind," or they'll screech "WHAT???!!! Yes. You do!"

But I don't want kids...more Sometimes when a person I've just met or a well-meaning family member talks about my future children, I stop to correct them. "Oh, no, I don't want kids," I say, laughing breezily to lighten this very personal revelation. This answer garners one of two responses, neither of which are very polite. Either my conversation partner will look at me with eyes of wisdom and upraised chin and say, "You're young, you'll change your mind," or they'll screech "WHAT???!!! Yes. You do!"

But I don't want kids and probably never will, and it's not a shoot from the hip folly of youth sort of idea but a decision I've given a lot of thought to. My family history is a potpourri of unpleasant genes that I would hate to pass on to another human being. The world is overpopulated enough as it is. Plus I am almost certain that I would be the Ayelet Waldman mother who resents her kids at least half of the time for taking energy and focus away from her relationship with her husband.

Above all, I have never had that "maternal instinct." It's just not there. In my early teens I was sometimes forced to babysit for my younger cousins with my sister. I would lay on the couch and read and dole out snacks, counting the minutes until my aunt and uncle came home, while my sister picked up the kids and played and changed their diapers and talked so easily in those baby voices that I refused (and still do refuse) to use. Kids can be cute, but I don't want to spend too much time with them.

Some of us are meant to be parents. Some of us are not. And I think it's better for those of us who are not to recognize that before we screw up the next generation.

Bee Season is an entire book about what happens when two people who shouldn't have kids go ahead and have kids. Predictably, the kids are treated as appendages, unconsciously encouraged to compete with each other for their parents' favor (which isn't even favor so much as just attention) while their parents try to make themselves whole. The Naumann household is something of a worst case scenario. But it should be required reading for those You Really Want Children, Yes You Do! people.

Goldberg's depiction of the brother/sister relationship between the Naumann kids, Eliza and Aaron, is perfect. Before they got to the age where they realized they were in competition to be the smartest, most worthy child, they were a team, scheming to get the best pieces of cake in the synagogue. It's heartbreaking (but true) when Aaron starts to ignore Eliza and can't even look at her face over dinner, once she starts winning her spelling bees and winning over their father where their father was previously Aaron's alone. That's exactly what happens in a family where love is based on merit. Resentment for that parent is only a speck of a seed, to bloom sometime in the future when the child is old enough for hindsight.

I also liked Aaron's religious wanderings as a rebellion to his father's Judaism, once his dad stops paying attention to him. There is some interpersonal reason for everything that happens in this book, but the reasoning is never too annoyingly obvious. Goldberg is a smart writer that way.

Bee Season is very well done. But I can't say I loved reading it, because the Naumanns are so much like a real, recognizable family that it's uncomfortable. Who loves reading about parents who shouldn't be parents parenting? I don't. But I do love reading about kids overcoming the issues born of their parents who shouldn't have been parents, and there is enough of that here to make the reading worthwhile. It's more like 3.5 stars. (less)

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Dec 31, 2008 Ed rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tracey and I listened to this Audio book together. I think we bought this 10 CD unabridged 12 hour set while visiting Minnesota last August and started it on the way to Oregon for Thanksgiving, and finished it on the way to Tucson for Christmas 2008.

I won't put any spoilers here, so don't worry.

It was read by the Author Myla Goldberg, and she is an excellent reader. Some authors are not good readers, and the probably don't know it. But Myla is really creative and captivating.

We both loved the f...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Angus rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed-and-blogged

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

I’m a little reluctant to include this in The Rhapsodies. Yes, I discriminate the books that make it here. This is my blog anyway. And why am I so defensive?

I have read a lot of books, but I am afraid that not all of them are worth remembering. I think this work blurs that line between those areas, and it has now officially jumped over to that sphere of books that have something important to say.

Moving on, I mistook this for a dictionary. It belonged to my...more

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Jul 22, 2008 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am hearby stating that my new rating policy will be based on whether or not the book moved or uplifted me in any way.

I really was excited about this novel because I'm a sucker for any young-girl-coming-of-age novel, but this one left me flat at the end. I couldn't stop reading, but the entire time I read I had this "yuck" feeling. This family is dysfunctional beyond words. The characters continually misunderstand each other. I was always waffling between sympathy and disgust with the father....more

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Mar 28, 2008 Bree rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I picked up this book because I have liked watching or reading all these recent spelling bee movies or books. I thought this would be something similar. Surprisingly enough this is nothing like a "traditional" spelling bee story. Although I had a hard time putting the book down I am pretty sure I didn't really like it. It was like reading a book about a family of compulsive, delusional, fanatics.

Miriam--who had to pretend to be a lawyer yet live off her inheritance so she could steal things to...more I picked up this book because I have liked watching or reading all these recent spelling bee movies or books. I thought this would be something similar. Surprisingly enough this is nothing like a "traditional" spelling bee story. Although I had a hard time putting the book down I am pretty sure I didn't really like it. It was like reading a book about a family of compulsive, delusional, fanatics.

Miriam--who had to pretend to be a lawyer yet live off her inheritance so she could steal things to put the world right and compulsively clean her kitchen, ignores her children and husband she didn't understand.

Saul--a man who is caught up in his own world of jewish mysticism, a man who has spent his life tryting to find that mysticism first thru drugs and sex and finally thru Abulafia (hebrew letter mysticism) which he believe will come thru his daughter who he has pretty much ignored until she wins the spelling bee at school, a man who pays attention to his son and then completely forgets about him while working w/ his daughter on the spelling and indoctrinating her into Abulafia's work. Yet he refuses to see the similarities between what he is trying to teach his daughter and the choice of Hare Krishna religion that his son has chosen. A man who doesn't have the slightest idea what is going on with his wife and is so caught up in his own persuits that he fails to recongnize that his wife is mentally ill and that his son has switched religions.

Aaron--a boy who has been seeking experiences with god since he saw a flashing red light from a plane reflected in the clouds, a boy who wants to grow up like his father but is usually ignored by him except for the study sessions he has with him which disappear when Eliza wins the spelling bee. He finally finds what he is looking for with Hare Khrisna, and spends his days chanting for hours and wanting to live in the temple to escape the real world.

Eliza--a below average student who has a talent for spelling words. She is basically ignored by both parents until she wins the spelling bee where she is then in the good graces of her father. She latches onto the theory's of Abulafia and wants to communicate with God thru letters. She too spends hours and hours chanting and doing word permutations in order to get closer to god (not much different than Aarons chanting). I think she is the only one that may go back to some semblence of normalcy when she purposefully mispells a word in the first round of the next spelling bee.

I liked these characters in the beginning of the book but after they spent the whole book spiralling down in their own versions of maddness, I just wasn't really interested in their story...maybe it was all just a little too unbelieveable that really none of these people was remotely normal in any way. I am still not sure I understand the point of the story or even the ending. I think the end was Eliza's way of trying to regain some sort of normalcy back in her life.

I don't think I could recommend this book to my friends as something I liked but it was interesting.
(less)

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Apr 04, 2007 Leslie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book is unique in the sense that it addresses a common storyline (coming-of-age while under intense academic pressure) in a quite uncommon manner. While guising as a simple plot involving a girl's quest to win a spelling bee, this book explores topics all the way from mental illness to religious awakenings.

The heart of the story, though, rests in a young girl's observations of and interactions with her family. An omnisceint narrator threads the plot together, as s/he explains the inner-mos...more This book is unique in the sense that it addresses a common storyline (coming-of-age while under intense academic pressure) in a quite uncommon manner. While guising as a simple plot involving a girl's quest to win a spelling bee, this book explores topics all the way from mental illness to religious awakenings.

The heart of the story, though, rests in a young girl's observations of and interactions with her family. An omnisceint narrator threads the plot together, as s/he explains the inner-most thoughts of each individual family member through short vinettes. This format works well for the plot and what the book seemingly is attempting to do, yet overall I think the narrative as a whole falls just short of revealing its own intended truth.

The major downfall of the book is also its key strength: it is painfully honest. I often got a sense that sometimes the narrator was TOO omniscient, telling me things about the characters that I didn't want to know. I often felt embarrassed for them and ashamed of their thoughts. While this of course speaks to the strength of the author's perception in observing human behavior, I was left wondering WHY the author wanted us to know these things about her characters. Are we supposed to reflect on our own attitudes about our family members and ourselves? Should our knowledge of their thoughts conjure our sympathies or malice towards one/all of them? Or was it meant to be purely a writing exercise, in which the author attempted to explore her flexibility in writing different characters? Whatever the answer, I feel that I would have had a much more gratifying reading experience had I understood the point of being made to feel like an incestuous peeping tom.

Narratively, I feel that the book does not quite complete what it started, although in all fairness, the height of ambition is quite admirable. Nor does it encourage the reader to "complete" the story on his or her own. This loose plot ending, combined with both the narrator's penetrating eye and sensitive subject matter (involving the conflation of religion, sexual acts, mental illness, and family jealousy), left me with an overall eeriness upon finishing the book. While sometimes the sense of being "haunted" by a book is a delight to the reader, I would not place this in the same category. Yet while I shudder when I recall this story, it is a shudder due to the emotionally piercing honesty of its voice, one that seeks to speak truth even at the cost of human humiliation. And for that, Bee Season wins both my merit and my cautious recommendation. (less)

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May 27, 2008 Tifnie rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

UGH! I couldn't get through this book fast enough and I couldn't resign myself to not finish it.

Baiscally this book is about a disfunctional jewish family. Eliza, who is at first mentally challenged, soon becomes a spelling bee champ. Saul, her father, drops guitar lessons with his son to teach Eliza about Abulafia which is a sophisticated theory of language. He brother, Aaron, becomes disengaged and starts to explore his own identy outside the jewish faith. All the while, the mother, Miriam is...more

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Mar 02, 2008 Alison rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: spiritual seekers, parents...I guess anyone who's curious about it

There is nothing in the title or the book sleeve of this debut novel from Myla Goldberg to prepare you for what's inside. This is less a coming-of-age story of a young spelling prodigy, than it is a dysfunctional family drama that dissects the needs, insecurities, and emotional baggage of each family member. They're all empty, and they're all looking to be filled.

This is original and eccentric story-telling. She's a fabulous writer. The sentences are fresh and well thought-out. I can't really pi...more

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Jun 23, 2007 Chanpheng rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I picked up this book from a book exchange, not sure if I could finish something on spelling bees - but this book is entirely something different. It's about obsession. A family is falling apart and suddenly the daughter wins spelling bees.

As an aside, there's an Indian boy whose parents were deported - he's become a master speller since they left, in part to deal with his grief and loneliness at being left in the US. In the story in the IHT, he talked about his techniques for studying - word i...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Karen Powell added it · review of another edition

This story about how a Philadelphia suburban dysfunctional family's individual search for God consumes them around the time the youngest member's previously dormant talents start to shine and make her a spelling bee star.[return]The champion speller is Eliza, who was previously categorized as unremarkable and was an unspoken embarrassment by her more illustrious family members. When she starts winning spelling bees, her father, Saul, finally takes notice of her and she replaces his eldest son wi...more This story about how a Philadelphia suburban dysfunctional family's individual search for God consumes them around the time the youngest member's previously dormant talents start to shine and make her a spelling bee star.[return]The champion speller is Eliza, who was previously categorized as unremarkable and was an unspoken embarrassment by her more illustrious family members. When she starts winning spelling bees, her father, Saul, finally takes notice of her and she replaces his eldest son with his time and concentration. [return][return]Saul gave up the swinging bachelor life for the idealized life of a Jewish scholar, getting married to attain a quiet study and a life partner that would help him concentrate and learn how to speak to God. The best he could do was attain the position of cantor, but in Eliza he sees the potential to speak to God through the way she has a kinship with the alphabet. Previously, his son Aaron, who was a wunderkind with Hebrew prayers and wanted to be a rabbi, was supposed to lead Saul to God. However, Aaron is ignored by Saul until he realizes that the divide between them is too wide, and it is too late.[return][return]When time with his father is cut off and discouraged, Aaron looks for God elsewhere than his father's study. He tries out different religions until one fits and changes his whole way of life to the point he can no longer comfortably live at home.[return][return]Meanwhile, his mother Miriam, who always had OCD-like tendencies to scrub and clean into the wee hours searches for God through perfection, or the word she prefers: "Perfectimundo." Yet her quest for perfection is hardly harmless as she is driven to steal from stores and houses in her quest to find the one object that will make her perfect. This obsession since childhood sends her down a spiral of lies and shatters her family. [return][return]The family's failure to communicate with one another is their downfall: They are so obsessed with their own personal journeys to find God, that they are strangers to one another. Their ways of trying to reach God is oftentimes fierce, and Goldberg shines in the surreal descriptions of their hallucinations. It is easy to get caught up in the Naumanns' lives, as very personal things are revealed about them so that even in their most dysfunctional moments, we feel for them. Saul is less sympathetic because his obliviousness has made his children social outcasts, but when it all comes crashing down upon him, Goldberg can make us feel his desperation and sudden realization of his action's consequences. [return][return]This is a great character study, but can be disturbing at times. Things like Miriam's decent into madness and Saul's treatment of his least-favored child of the moment can make you want to shake these people. Other scenes overwhelm , like Eliza's mystical spelling hallucinations as they get more and more intense. [return][return]An interesting book on the whole, but I don't know if I would read it again, as it is emotionally draining. I think those interested in Jewish mysticism would enjoy this best.(less)

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Jan 25, 2009 Bonnie Jeanne rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So much is made in other reviews of this book of the family that seeks perfection only to fall further and further from it, but I think the story isn't so much about perfection as it is about just plain seeking. It didn't end like "American Beauty," but I think the ending is just as it should be.

I didn't see the Naumann family as at all eccentric. They are a family like any family, with communication trouble, secrets, and compulsions. What difference does it make if a compulsion brings you into...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This book is complicated. It is well-written and draws you in effectively. The family members in the story are caricatures of dysfunction, and that is mostly what made me unhappy. I also absolutely hated the ending. This is a book that will not leave you quickly. It will make you examine each character, turning each over and over in your mind, trying to make sense of them.
*spoilers
They are all unrealistic and mild versions of a spoiled child's idea of what a dysfunctional family must be. The mar...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Kathleen rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I found this book very depressing. Saul, his wife Miriam, son Aaron and daughter Eliza are all people dissatisfied with their lives, who imagine that mystical experiences can fill the void. The closer each of them moves to their personal nirvana, the farther they move from each other, and from confronting the emptiness that propelled them on this path in the first place. I found it impossible to care about any of these characters or take much of an interest in their belated efforts to extricate...more

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Dec 12, 2012 Tandie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary, depressing-downers, dysfunctional-family

I love the way Myla Goldberg writes. I've got to try some of her other books.

Bee Season made my heart ache for Eliza and Aaron, siblings who were once partners in everything. They end up competing against one another for a scrap of attention from their self centered father. He focuses on Aaron & Jewish mysticism, nothing else. Dad ignores Eliza until she proves herself to be some kind of prodigy in a school spelling bee. He totally drops his son and becomes obsessed with his daughter, who's...more

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Dec 10, 2012 Cleo rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Eliza Naumann doesn't think she's special, especially after she is placed in a class for slow learners by her teachers. It's her brother Aaron who her father Saul dotes on. But then, Eliza wins the school and state spelling bee. She goes to the national competition, and her father suddenly becomes interested in teaching her. This sounds like an interesting plot, but the book isn't just about that. Everyone in the family has problems; Aaron is drifting away from Judaism, Miriam and Saul's relatio...more

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Jun 23, 2012 Angela Dean rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Words cannot describe how much i HATED this book. I will attempt it anyways. In fact, it doesn't even deserve one star. It started out just fine, a young girl who was never thought to be that smart discovers she has a talent for spelling and decides to enter the spelling bee. At this point, I thought "Ok, so this is kind of cute I guess". I was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. This book is messed up. The mother deserves to be in a mental facility, that dad is as vain as can be, and their teenage...more

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Feb 17, 2012 Marie rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: literary, contemporary, fiction, library, jewish, reviewed, discussion-group

When choosing a book for the library discussion group, I was offered a list from a particular program the library uses. There really weren't many options, and none of the those I'd actually read before would be worth talking about.

But Bee Season had a compelling enough concept that I chose it despite only so-so reviews here on GR. Because at least people had found enough to talk about. And my group did talk about it. We talked lots about how it failed.

To be clear, we all agreed that it wasn't a...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Karo rated it 4 of 5 stars

Bee Season is the story of the unraveling of a family which was clinging together by the barest of threads, with two parents so engrossed in their own obsessions that they listened but never heard. We have Aaron, the older brother, who is consistently bullied at school and feels at peace only at the Jewish temple where his father, Saul, is the cantor. Saul has created a world for himself in his tiny study full of books from which her emerges only to cook dinner for the family as his wife, Miriam...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Patrice rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

This is a wonderfully crafted novel that centers around the Naumann family. Each family member is a unique individual with their own set of quirks, interests, and obsessions. There is really nothing commonplace about the Naumann family, which is both delightful and frustrating at times. I wanted to throw this book across the room several times thinking to myself, "These people are so neurotic - I'm over it."

In all honesty, it's the neuroticism, mental instability, religious zealousness, and tens...more

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Nov 21, 2011 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-novel, spirituality

In the beginning was the Word: Logos. If spelling the knowledge and faith contained therein were a requirement for salvation, more than likely most of us would find ourselves cooling our heels in some form of remedial purgatory, seeking divine revelation in a book rather than in ourselves and our fellow sinners. Such is the downward path set before poor Eliza: she just wants to be loved by an attentive father; he wants to create a prodigy fed and nurtured on syllables instead of understanding. I...more In the beginning was the Word: Logos. If spelling the knowledge and faith contained therein were a requirement for salvation, more than likely most of us would find ourselves cooling our heels in some form of remedial purgatory, seeking divine revelation in a book rather than in ourselves and our fellow sinners. Such is the downward path set before poor Eliza: she just wants to be loved by an attentive father; he wants to create a prodigy fed and nurtured on syllables instead of understanding. If cluelessness -- about what makes his own family members tick -- were a sin, he'd have his own special ring in Dante's Inferno, doomed to accumulate correct spellings that produce nothing but incoherence masquerading as scholarly virtue. His obtuseness strains credulity at times, but fortunately, the painfully believable struggles of Eliza and her brother make up for it.

In this heartfelt exploration of family alienation and spiritual seeking, G. pits scholastic monasticism against communal knowledge and compassion, and if Goldberg stacks the deck against the former to an extent that would make Aquinas protest from his grave, she at least grants Pere Naumann the brains and heart to eventually figure out his mistake. Though this conflict threatens to lapse into a rigid rubric as the novel progresses, Goldberg is talented enough to develop complex characters that evoke our sympathies, partly through eye-raising but credible plot twists and partly through rich language. Like many talented first-time novelists, she tends to lay on that richness until it becomes more of a wearying distraction from the dream world of fiction than a means to enhancing it. But that seems like the kind of narrow-minded, technical criticism Mr Naumann would throw at his daughter's spelling errors.

Is it a "disturbing" novel, as some have commented? Sure, if, like me, you're disturbed by a culture that can seem like a disorienting, if not destabalizing amalgam of theocracy and meritocracy, where success requires a near puritanical belief in self-reliance, and failure gives off a whiff of moral offense. But I would describe story as more compelling than disturbing. Overall, I'd rate this one 3 1/2 stars (rest of our local book club rated it one of best books we'd read in some time). I would read another book by her, and I think she's just come out with a new one.(less)

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Nov 04, 2011 Elizabeth rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: judaism

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 06, 2011 Nikole rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really really enjoyed this story. The concept of spelling bees initially seemed like a fairly boring topic to base a story around, but I soon discovered that the spelling bee world is just a tiny little part of this story, and in reality it’s more of a book about the Naumann family and what happens when the family dynamics change.

The characters in this book are extremely interesting and complex…which is surprising, given that the book was short. It seems that most of the shorter novels that I...more

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Apr 26, 2011 Beverly rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is the story of a dysfunctional family's journey into fragmentation. Eliza, the daughter who has been relegated to the slow classes and the fringe of her family, suddenly finds that she has a hidden talent. She can spell. She unexpectedly wins her school's spelling bee and cannot find a way to tell her father. Her brother Aaron has always been the apple of her father's eye. They spend time together studying and playing the guitar. Her mother is withdrawn and has OCD. With her newfound talen...more

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Jan 06, 2011 Travis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2008

This book was amazing. There is not a single thing I didn't love about it. I loved the writing, the storylines, the utter dysfunctionality of the characters. I've seen some complaints in other reviews about the ending, but I thought it was perfect. It ends at exactly the right place.[return][return]I'm impressed with how many threads she managed to weave together. The search for something spiritual they all share, the hints of Miriam's mental imbalance in Aaron and Eliza, the way both parents ar...more

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Mar 05, 2010 Mimi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book ... it kind of made me think of many of the books I used to read by authors such as Chaim Potok (in its discussion of the acceptance and denial of Jewish mysticism and religion as a whole) and Judy Blume (in that it dealt with growing up with all-to-human parents, rites of passage and much more). ...And yet this is a book for adults and deals with adult emotions and issues!

The characters created by Myla Goldberg are wonderfully crafted.

* Saul, the obsessively scholarly...more

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Oct 25, 2009 Lori rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Odd, interesting, dynamic, mystic, weird, all of these adjectives describe my reactions to this novel. I waited a long time to get this book from the library and although I didn't find it boring, I was mildly disappointed after all the hype that surrounded it.
Eliza a second grader is not your average child. Enmeshed in a most dysfunctional home, ignored and a loner she discovers an incredible talent accidentally during a spelling bee. Her father Saul latches onto this and centers his attention e...more

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May 05, 2009 jess rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to jess by: Ariel Federow

Shelves: audiobook-d, 2009, fiction

Bee Season exists at the baffling intersection of Spelling Bees, Jewish mysticism, Hare Krishna recruitment, and mental illness. Each family member has a sort of unconventional relationship with the others, although it's difficult to see how very strange things are until they start to fall apart. (Oh, Chinua Achebe, you go everywhere with me).

The very average, younger sister becomes the favored child when Eliza suddenly displays her surprising aptitude for turning words into carefully placed le...more Bee Season exists at the baffling intersection of Spelling Bees, Jewish mysticism, Hare Krishna recruitment, and mental illness. Each family member has a sort of unconventional relationship with the others, although it's difficult to see how very strange things are until they start to fall apart. (Oh, Chinua Achebe, you go everywhere with me).

The very average, younger sister becomes the favored child when Eliza suddenly displays her surprising aptitude for turning words into carefully placed letters recited aloud. This provides an opportunity for the fissures of the family to become giant gullies straight through the middle of a very normal family. Her older brother starts spending time with people who shave their heads, smell like incense, wear orange robes, and talk about the illusions of the material world. Her mother drifts further and further away from reality. Her father misses the whole unraveling, caught up in his enthusiasm for Eliza's potential & the going-on's of Transcendence.

I was captivated by the fumbling, ineffective parenting. I mean, no one really "knows" how to "be a good parent," but it is always remarkable how best intentions can go so awry. When your kid joins a cult, is it your shortcoming as a parent? I also loved the very honest way that Goldberg explored the ways that Saul transfers his own dreams/goals onto a kid's life experience. Aaron & Eliza resolve that pressure in very different ways. This provides insight into their convictions & spirit.

In the post-book interview, Goldberg says that she only knew Eliza's character and the final scene of the book, and that the rest of the story unfolded itself to her as she wrote it. Dang! What a ride through the fiction lurking in the back of Myla's brain.

I read this on the suggestion of Ariel Federow. She said, "I liked it a lot. I don't want to blow the ending." As a person who *loved* A Prayer for Owen Meany in high school, this sort of review with a mysterious, spoil-able ending really intrigues me. I not only requested it from the library, but bumped it to the top of my "to read" queue, getting it on audiobook because that is the fastest way for me to get through a book. I commute, okay? Anyway, I was glad I did because this book is the JAM. (less)

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About Myla Goldberg

Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of Bee Season and Wickett's Remedy, as well as a children's book, Catching the Moon. The paperback edition of her newest novel, The False Friend, will be coming out this fall. She also plays accordion and banjo and sings as part of the Brooklyn art-punk band, The Walking Hellos.

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“She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see.” — 12 people liked it

“Rushing toward her are all the letters of the alphabet. Each one moves in its own way, X cartwheeling over and over, C hopping forward, M and N marching stiff-legged and resolute.” — 2 people liked it

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