Bee Season

My mother left me this book after a recent visit, saying I might like it. I was puzzled, because I thought it was a Scholastic Books-type coming-of-age story of a young girl, with slightly more adult themes to explain its popularity. It does have a coming-of-age story, but that doesn't even begin to describe it.Eliza is a young girl who has been shunted off to the slow learners section of grade school. Memorable passages describe her bewildered transition from promising 2nd-grader to forgotten 5th-grader. (There is another book compressed inside this one about children whose potential is ignored or forgotten.) When she wins the school spelling bee, her disbelief is matched by her family's. From this point it is easy to imagine the rest of the book that could have followed, but this book is not an inspirational homily for teenagers. Although the spelling bee sections are given prominence and are very well written, Bee Season is really about something both bigger and darker.It meticulously, excruciatingly charts the mental state of a family that is fragmenting. All four members of the Naumann family have unique, secret obsessions that slowly redirect their outward behavior. There is an even-handed symmetry between their viewpoints that in lesser hands would simply be schematic, but here is a great source of power. In switching at regular intervals from one view to another, the similarities between Aaron's search for God, Saul's Kabbalism, Miriam's "collecting" and Eliza's spelling become clear: all are shown to be seductive but ultimately inhuman pursuits. The absolute certainty each family member holds is revealed to be deceptive, with eventual destructive consequences for all. If you have ever been forced to confront someone's mental illness, you will appreciate what happens.This is a much, much better book than some of the tepid and dismissive reviews here would indicate. It's not meant to be a page-turner; the events are allowed the time they require to unfold. The characters are not completely lovable; they are realistically portrayed, sometimes painfully. Whether or not you find the mystical passages believable (as I did), everything else is given without sentimentality and with heartbreaking sympathy. As befits a book about language, the writing is both streamlined and muscular, but it is the sense of balance between the characters that is most astonishing. We should all be so just.

This is the best book I have read in a long time. Goldberg writes beautifully and the story is woven together like a rich, colorful tapestry. "Bee Season" is the story of a family that disintegrates as each member seeks individual spiritual enlightenment. The Naumann family is based on a tissue of lies and misconceptions, but manages to maintain a precarious balance until the "average" daughter upsets the equilibrium by unexpectedly winning a spelling bee.Although the daughter, Eliza, is the catalyst that sets drastic changes in motion, they are really the result of the complete self absorption and lack of awareness exhibited by her father Saul. He is a man with a mission, and his single-minded efforts to find divine connection blind him to the chaos all around him. He somehow fails to notice that his wife Miriam is mentally ill and his son Aaron is a total misfit falling under the influence of a cult. He also seems to have conveniently forgotten that Jewish mysticism is serious business. He irresponsibly introduces it to a child--despite long-standing prohibitions against its exploration by any other than mentally stable, educated adults.Saul is completely clueless about the forces in motion in his own household. As disaster follows disaster, he clings to the belief that Eliza will win the national spelling championship, and this will be a sign from God that he is on the right path. Eliza chooses to make sure that her father cannot continue to hide from the truth. If he can ever figure out what happened, he might indeed achieve enlightenment.

I found Bee Season to be a wonderful, entrancing novel--part coming of age novel, part disfunctional family novel, and part something all its own. It should be obvious to readers of the reviews on these pages, though, that this novel is not for everyone and it's not for everyone because of that part of it that is something all its own. Eliza Naumann is a shy, unremarkable girl, treated as nothing special even by her own family. It isn't until she wins the area spelling bee and is off to the nationals that she finally gets some attention from her cerebral father. Her mother is another story, another plot line. From the moment Miriam, Eliza's mother, is introduced, there is something simply not right with her one of Goldberg's threads in this novel explores what's inside Miriam's head. We also meet Eliza's brother Aaron, who, because Eliza has displaced him from the child of honor in the household, goes off on a spiritual quest of his own. Things are not what they seem in this novel, there is much brewing in this seemingly simple suburban family. Saul, the father sees Eliza's spelling talent as a sign of her inner mysticism, but he focuses so on her, that the other members of his family, who sorely, sorely need him are neglected to the point of breakdown. There are no easy resolutions to their problems and the novel does not end with loose ends tied up neatly, the problems continue. The mysticism element of the novel may strike some as odd. Perhaps these factors are why many have disliked the novel. If you feel up to it, though, read this novel. Bee Season is a marvelous novel written by a talented young writer. Myla Goldberg's writing is beautiful, her characters are real. Yes, the story does take some interesting twists, nothing predictable, but still nothing that comes "out of the blue." Enjoy

Every once in a while something comes along that demands your attention, be it a piece of music, a painting, or maybe something as simple as a brilliant sunset. "Bee Season" is one of those things. Myla Goldberg has a gift, like Joyce Carol Oats of conveying great depths of emotion with the sparsest of words. The story of little Eliza Naumann, a very ordinary girl who discovers an extraordinary gift in the spelling of words, becomes a painful journey of self discovery for her entire family. The first third of the novel manages to build an ample amount of suspense as Eliza moves from one spelling bee victory to the next. Her subsequent winnings color the rest of the novel with her father Saul and brother Aaron each making choices that could change their lives. My only shortcoming with the novel was my own lack of knowledge with the Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Much of what happens in the second half of the book revolves around this subject and had I known a little bit more about it I would've been even more involved than I already was. I'll anxiously await her follow up. Hopefully this is the start of a long literary careery

Let me start off by saying that I loved this book from start to finish. It's The Chosen for adults. It's hard to believe that this is the author's first novel. You will be totally drawn in by Eliza, the 9 year old who does not get tagged for the gifted and talented class like her older brother who does everything well, or so it seems. On the surface, this is a normal, intellectual Jewish family, but underneath, there are problems all around. I think the comparison with American Beauty is apt -- all is not well in suburbia. What makes this a literary work rather than just another good novel is the profound Kabbalistic tie in of the Tikkan Olan -- a kind of divine light. Once the broken pieces are put together, a certain level of mystic knowledge and proximity to God takes place. Some critics didn't like the side stories: Miriam, the mother and her mental breakdown, the brother and his seduction into the Hare Krishas, but what makes this book so absorbing is that all the characters are striving to find enlightenment in whatever way they can. While Eliza follows the Kabbalistic trail of spelling and letter combinations and permutations, her brother seeks reality in the Krishas, and Miriam shoplifts in a manical way (I don't want to give away that plot). It's a terrific book -- lyrical, touching and well conceived. As an aside, it's nice to see a book when the father is the one who holds together a broken family. He's a very sympathetic and well-drawn character. So far, it's one of my favorite books of the year.