Bee Season

by Myla Goldberg

Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted 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 takes it as a sign that she is destined for greatness. In this altered reality, Saul inducts her into his hallowed study and lavishes upon her the attention previously reserved for Aaron, who in his displacement embarks upon a lone quest for spiritual fulfillment. When Miriam's secret life triggers a familial explosion, it is Eliza who must order the chaos.Myla Goldberg's keen eye for detail brings Eliza's journey to three-dimensional life. As she rises from classroom obscurity to the blinding lights and outsized expectations of the National Bee, Eliza's small pains and large joys are finely wrought and deeply felt.Not merely a coming-of-age story, Goldberg's first novel delicately examines the unraveling fabric of one family. The outcome of this tale is as startling and unconventional as her prose, which wields its metaphors sharply and rings with maturity. The work of a lyrical and gifted storyteller, Bee Season marks the arrival of an extraordinarily talented new writer.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Jewish, Contemporary, Adult Fiction, Coming Of Age, Novels

288 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 2, 2000

About the author

Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of Bee Season, Wickett's Remedy, and The False Friendas well as a children's book, Catching the Moon.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had heard of this book...
but somehow had never read it. [23, 902 ratings]....
Not even sure why I had missed reading Myla Goldberg until very recently.
I understand there’s a movie of ‘Bee Season”, with Richard Greer and Juliette Binoche. Haven’t seen it either.... but I’m now interested.

Two-for-two: 5 star ratings for me with Myla Goldberg.
I loved her book, “Feast Your Eyes”....( also recently finished)....
Both books, completely different from one another - are the type of stories that stay with me years from now.

Given that I’m allergic to bees, I don’t usually ‘try’ to put myself in harms way....
but, ha....
I got a whopper sting in “Bee Season”.

Coming-of-age....
Coming apart....
Kabbalah studies....
Family madness.....
I agree with all the readers before me who said that this story was.... page turning absorbing ....

“Eliza realizes that a return to her old self is impossible. The thing she has become and the body she left behind will cancel each other out upon impact. For this, she is thankful. There is the sensation of drowning, of suffocation, her lungs are filling with a substance that is both thicker and thinner than air. This is the pain of creation, of life emerging from void, of vacuum birthing being”.

[BlackOxford · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Purpose of Family

At least since the novels of William Makepeace Thackeray, the family has been portrayed as the corrupter of those who are its hapless constituents: spouses fight for superiority or escape; ambitious fathers and mothers impose their ambition and snobbery on children who might have turned out better in other circumstances; siblings prosecute relentless rivalries; everyone is driven by the imperatives of family membership. Parental duty and earnestness are parodied and filial loyalty is mocked mercilessly. Families are termed 'dysfunctional' because it's members are certifiably neurotic.

Bee Season turns the tables on this traditional slander. Its four characters - Mother, Father, Son, and Younger Daughter - come into the family, not so much psychically damaged as incomplete and certainly neurotic. Each strives for completeness in his or her own way, assisting or inhibiting the others along the way. But it is in and through the family that all recognise both their inadequacies and the effect of their strivings on the others. Families, in other words, are therapeutic. Families mitigate the neuroses of individual members.

Father, for example, is a theological scholar who feels himself a failure for never having experienced the spiritual transcendence he seeks. Daughter is a prodigy at spelling who wants Father's attention and some social recognition. Adolescent Son tries to recapture an infantile feeling of the divine presence. Mother acts out her inadequacies in petty thievery. While the condition of the family is the arena in which they operate, none of these 'neuroses' has its origin in the family itself.

Despite their apparently diverse, and uniquely personal, objectives, each member of the family is secretly pursuing the same goal of completion. And it is the gravitational field of the family, it is difficult to find a word other than love for this field, which gives them the strength and confidence to do this. Their forays into the world, sometimes bizarre, always end with a return to the touchstone of family life, including the routine weirdness of each other. Each in their own way is 'excessive' but their excess is simply accepted by the others, not encouraged.

Eventually, secrets become public knowledge. And in the mirror of the family, everyone develops into his or her own person. They leave it. But this is not a failure of the family; it is its success. Not dysfunction, then, but precisely its function: to reveal what has been hidden and thrust it into the world. And the family persists in an entirely new form. An intriguing fiction that avoids cliche and provokes some interesting thought, therefore.

[rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

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--their brief perceived brushes with perfection/God, their sense of loss as it slips away, their longing to experience it again, and the isolation that results from their individual obsessions with recapturing that moment of wholeness . . . I gave it 5 stars because I felt like the writing was so very, very good.

I would definitely recommend this book, with a warning that its tone of dysfunction is so vivid that it may pervade your personal life as you read it--but I wouldn't let that stop you, it's worth it.

[Brina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bee Season is a Jewish Book Club selection coming up. There is a lot to unpack from this debut novel that premiered twenty years ago. I remember reading it at the time and needed a refresher. I am waiting for the group discussion and then will post a full review.

[Jenny Grundberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

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. And I felt like Eliza's transformation from mediocre to genuis was underdeveloped.

I was truly sickened by Aaron's entire religious process, in that it was rooted in a mixture of lack of self-esteem and rebellion towards his father. The Jewish mysticism (which by the way was a bizarre new way of looking at the Jewish religion (especially after reading so much Chaim Potok) and again left a bad feeling in my stomach) is out-right frightening, though the author does a rip-snortin' good job describing it.

And the ending left everything wide open. Only closure for Eliza (the main character) and everyone else's situation is swinging in the wind.

All in all, yuck.

[Bree · Rating 2 out of 5]

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.

[Travis · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 are looking to their children to fulfill their dreams.[return][return]I really liked the way it was told, too. I didn't find the timeline at all confusing, despite everything being present tense; the events of each section were easy enough to place in the past or present. I haven't read many (any?) modern novels that use an omniscient POV like this, and before reading this, I would have said I'd hate it, but it really works. The POV slips easily between characters without every being confusing.[return][return]I also love that it was set in the '80s. :)

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

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 between spriritual and intellectual growth, between obsessions and possessions we can see and ones we can only conjure manifestations of. Goldberg captures beautifully the suffocating love and expectations (administered in special cases through skill-and-drill) that parents inflict on their children, as well as the cruelty kids inflict as they seek to aggressively distinguish themselves from their parents. As the book progressed, however, I felt the characters were retreating from me and turning into symbols/crazy people. I like symbols and crazy people and symbols for crazy people (see: the Artist Formerly Known as Prince), but I put the book down feeling a little disappointed, missing the people I had been delighted, for a time, to meet and follow.

[Kristin · Rating 1 out of 5]

The first third was ok. The second third was tedious. The last third was awful.

I was sad I read this book.

[Lisa Vegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book. I loved this very intense story of a girl and her father, mother, and brother. Each of their characters and their relationships are gone into with such psychological depth. The author is able to impart a sort of heavy, although not depressing, atmosphere, which fits perfectly with the inner lives of the characters. It’s beautifully written, and a lot of sympathy is shown for all of these quirky characters and their many flaws. Don’t need to know about or care about mystical Judaism (I didn’t) or spelling bees to enjoy this book. Lots of surprises. Love, love, love the ending.

[Salema · Rating 3 out of 5]

Times like these I wished Goodreads would have 0.5 grading system, so I could give this book a 3.5 and not feel guilty about giving it a 3. Because I understand authors could benefit from it with their right target audience. There's a reader for every book.

Now let's get to the actual review. I am taken by surprise at how much I enjoyed it. I didn't think I would, since, it's not a genre I normally gravitate to. Whether you like the story or not, it cannot be refuted that the writing style should get a 5 out of 5. It is the kind of effortless, seamless prose with just the right amount of hyperbole I aspire for myself.

It starts off great but suffers a mid-point slump and ends with a "WHOA!". This is a story about a dysfunctional family. A mom with a personality disorder, a religious and an overzealous father, a teen in his experimental phase of life, a young girl trying to be noticed. These are people you can relate to or have met at some point of life. They all seem to be struggling with their own-self and at the same time with the shifting family dynamics. Going through the day to day hubbub, under the thinly veiled false calmness, you can sense from a mile that a ticking time bomb is waiting to go off.

There's spelling bee contests, Judaism, Hinduism, kleptomania, isolation, loneliness, teenage angst. And it can all get emotionally tiresome especially when there's very little affection or joy to balance the lows.

[Tifnie · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 completely disenchanted, leading a fairly large lie her whole life.

While, the description may appear sound and interesting, the read was not. Too much time was spent on father and daughter studing Abulafia theory and too much time on Aaron looking outside the family. By the last 10 or so pages, Myla Goldberg, the author, neatly wraps it up with an explaination that is all together unbelievable and unacceptable.

[Nikoleta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Μπερδεμένο και βαρετό. Δυστυχώς αυτό το βιβλίο είναι φλατ, δεν έχει καμία σπιρτάδα. Επίσης πηγαίνει από το παρελθόν στο παρόν χωρίς σειρά, άλλες φορές ανά δυο παραγράφους άλλες φορές ανά μια (δεν έχει κεφάλαια), και με μπέρδευε τελείως. Επίσης χανόμουν μέσα στους εβραϊκούς όρους που δυστυχώς πουθενά το βιβλίο δεν τους εξηγούσε. Μην μιλήσω για το perfectimundo της Μιριαμ… (ποτέ δεν κατάλαβα τι εννοεί ο ποιητής)… Το βιβλίο αυτό ήμουν σίγουρη ότι θα μου αρέσει, τελικά απλώς το άφησα!

[jess · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Angela Dean · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 son is reckless in his own sense. There is not much more that could have been done to mess up this family. It's almost like Goldberg began writing and midway through thought, "hmm...what can I do to make this seem like the worst family ever created?" I mean, the family is so messed up that it doesn't even seem real. Goldberg attempts to paint a picture of a typical American household but fails miserably.

Aside from the plot, the writing was horrible. When reading a book, I tend to analyze the characters. Upon analyzing these characters, I found nothing. To me, they were very one-dimensional. It seemed like they were simply photos of people, not actual people. I couldn't connect to any of them. Meanwhile, I was distracted by the terrible writing. It reads like thesaurus threw up on it. An 8th grader could have done better.

My final words to you: Don't read this book.

[Sandy Thomson · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 who suddenly does something noteworthy enough to garner his interest. And, again, his captivation by her seems more the thrill of her unexpectedly fulfilling more of his own fantasies. And all the while, he has be absent for so many years that he does not even know that his wife has left her job and is totally wrapped up in her own mentally unstable world. All of her issues brought on by what? We never quite know, but surely aggravated by her husband's complete absense.

I had lots of compassion for the children, but beyond that - ICK! - I won't be running to read anything else by this author!

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 bad book, just a badly-executed one. There's something almost dishonest in the construction and manipulation of the characters, and the twist at the end failed for everyone, because of lack of setup and in the character type as portrayed. Goldberg clearly had something to say: likely about the pressure of academic success on children and father/daughter relationships. You could care about Eliza, and Saul was an interesting, but static, character study.

The trip and fall near the end into the metaphysical wasn't really supported by the earlier plot, and again, the twist really only distracted from what the story had, up until then, been about. It's a build up of Eliza and her mother's story wasn't every really there, and didn't mean anything. And again, no one really changes in this book, though it seems intended as a character-driven work, the characters aren't enough to carry that description.

If this one is already on your list for whatever reason, you may as well read it. But if your list is long and you're thinking of adding another, skip. You may as well use the time to read something really worth it.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh. My. God. To quote another literary work, this book is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.

Silly me, I went into this book thinking that it would be about a girl and spelling bees (despite the warnings that I now remember receiving)... but the book is so much more than that. I think a better description of the book is a family looking for/rethinking their spirituality: Aaron, the brother, who begins to question his Judaism; Miriam, the mother, who feels drawn to things for a mysterious reason, thinking that they will fill some hole she is only subconsciously aware of; Saul, the father, who drives his children to be faithful to their Judaism and who has trouble seeing and accepting the changes the family is going through; and Eliza, the speller, who uses her spelling talent to get closer to God.

This book is so beautifully written... it flows and the language is so poetic and illustrative. I could not imagine seeing the movie, as I think it would ruin the magic of the book. The writing presented such PERFECT images in my head (like Miriam's "kaleidoscope" and Eliza's epiphany), seeing someone else's vision of it would absolutely kill it for me.

I did often find myself, though, trying to figure out what age group this book was written for. The main character is in fifth grade for the majority of the book, but there are quite a few sex scenes and references to sex and drugs.

Still, an absolutely amazing book that I think will stay with me and haunt me. 4.5 stars.

[Cherie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional! I’m dumbfounded at the relief I feel having finished this book today. I have been transfixed each time I picked it up. This is no simple story and there are no real answers, but the journey is unforgettable. If you think you know people, dear reader, abandon all of your preconceived notions before starting on this story.

[St Fu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The one character in the book who takes LSD is the one who DOESN'T go insane. I just wanted to start with that though it's not really accurate or relevant. Eliza doesn't go insane. She has an experience that some might call insane since it's extreme and out of the ordinary. I like to think it was a true mystical experience and that having tasted the ultimate, she decides to say "No thank you." Or maybe what she says is "That will surfice." This is a family of seekers--both of God and of emotional fulfillment--all the while trying to live normally and failing at it.

Miriam creates a great work of art which will be destroyed for use as evidence. I don't imagine her treatment in a mental hospital will result in anything good for either her or her family. Aaron seems to be getting something out of his kirtan but who knows if it will continue. My experience with Krishna folk is that they're mostly young so either one outgrows it or something else happens to separate you from it.

Saul is a failed mystic who hopes to get another chance vicariously through his daughter. She wants to be close to him and so goes along with the plan but in the end seems to learn that's not the kind of relationship with her dad that she wants. I wonder, though, if he's capable of any other kind. He may be, but we never find out. Maybe Eliza, with her transcendent knowledge, can work it out with him.

But we don't really know what happens to any of the characters. The book ends with a punchline. A good punchline, perhaps, but life is not a joke.

[Moonkiszt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is not about honeybees. Is about Spelling Bees (not bees that spell, either!).

An interesting read about a family at cross-purposes, each member working toward the next level of their own (as they've got it planned) future:

Saul - the patriarch of this family, and is a cantor, working on his connection to God and making sure his children have meaningful spiritual connections with their culture and God.

Miriam - the matriarch, who is also a successful attorney, leaves much of the parental duties to Saul.

Aaron - Oldest child, only son. I liked him as a character, but could have done without report of every act of self-stimulation. He is a supportive brother to Eliza, if not a little neglectful - but not from lack of affection - he's just a teenager. (And he's busy off wherever he is with business at hand.) He also has discovered that the one thing he and his Dad have in common - being a Jewish male - is a problem. He's shopping for a new religion.

Eliza - Youngest child, only daughter, a fifth-grader. A reader gets full doses of each character in this family, BUT we start with Eliza, end with Eliza and the Title Of The Book is firmly grounded in her world. Eliza believes she is the weak link in this family - everyone else is above-average in some spectacular way. That all changes when it becomes clear she is gifted with words, especially spelling. She triggers something in her father who then assists enthusiastically with her training for the upcoming Spelling Bee (because it is Bee season. . . .get it?)

All, in all an ok read. 3 stars because of too much of some mentions, and not enough of others. Just felt a little unbalanced and left me . . . .wanting.

52:29

[Snotchocheez · Rating 3 out of 5]

The word-nerd in me loved the first half of Myla Goldberg's Bee Season, a story half about perfectly average Eliza Naumann and her pursuit to win a spelling bee (and garner the attention of her less-than-attentive parents), the other half about Eliza's family, which seems on the surface to be perfectly normal, but threatens to embark upon paths of destruction as the story progresses.

Maybe it's because I'm not Jewish, but the story starts to decoct into a kaleidoscope of nonsense when a) Eliza's father Saul introduces his daughter to a rigor of Jewish mysticism, b) when Eliza's brother Aaron starts to question his Jewishness, and c) when Eliza's mom Miriam starts losing it (and what it has to do with anything in the story, other than to provide an example of questionable parenting.) (without providing spoilers, it's all the "whys" behind Miriam's character, not sufficiently addressed by Ms. Goldberg that causes this story to unravel).

Having said all that, this book was much better than I thought it would be. My interest stayed piqued throughout, and I even liked the ending. If only I could've bought all the hooey in the second half...

**teensy spoiler

(given my reading of this roughly coincides with the 2013 National Spelling Bee, I can't help but imagine, given the disproportionate number of Indian-Americans who dominate the bee year after year, it's difficult not to
rewrite Bee Season in my head with Eliza's brother Aaron, instead of (or perhaps in addition to) attaining Krishna spiritual enlightenment, also chanting (in Eliza/Kaballah-like fashion) his way to bee-victory. Just sayin'.)

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

A below average Jewish girl hopes her unexpected spelling abilities will help her save her family. It started out beautifully but became increasingly weirder and weirder until it discentigrated into something repelling.

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

this enjoyable, creepy, sad first novel about a family disintegrating piece by pretty piece got into the h w wilson fiction catlog too. maybe won an award too.

[Janet Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked—very nearly loved—this novel. Meet the Naumann family: Saul, the father, is a stay-at-home dad and obsessive, self-taught Kabballist. Miriam, the mother, is a brilliant and massively energetic lawyer, but emotionally distant from her family and harboring a dark, potentially dangerous secret. Son Arron, at 16, expects to become a rabbi someday, but as nerdy outcast at school, he finds himself wanting something more (or at least different) from his spiritual life. Ten year old daughter Eliza appears to be the only mediocre intellect in the family…until she wins the school spelling bee, and soon she’s won the city and regional bees and is heading on to nationals. When Eliza’s newly discovered talent changes her status at home and at school, the delicate equilibrium of her family is thrown out of order, and each of the Naumanns will suffer in his or her own way. A compelling story, interestingly flawed characters, and lovely writing. The only reason it didn’t end up at 5 stars is that the last third or so of the novel, as both Eliza and Aaron become ever more wrapped up in their intellectual and spiritual quests, became a bit repetitive and slow for me. Probably it was an accurate reflection of the navel-gazing that typically accompanies such questing, but for me the book lost a bit of momentum towards the end.

As an aside, I was surprised to see how many of the negative reviews of this book on Goodreads cite the fact that the story is depressing in places, and that the family is unhappy and Saul and Marion less-than-ideal parents. True enough, but if a messed up family = a bad book, there went a fair portion of the world’s literature. Do people really think that novels are supposed to model good parenting and display only happy, well-adjusted children and families? It seems an odd way to judge a book, but I guess we all have our own scales of value.

[Basia Korzeniowska · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a fascinating book! a friend bought it because she is interested in bees, the buzzing kind and found out soon enough that the bees in question were all to do with American spelling quizzes. horrendous idea, but the perfect vehicle for showing us contemporary family life at its worst and eventually at its most redemptive. I was just getting a bit peeved with the mother when it runed out she had a fascinating secret - and I was hooked.
Beautifully written, the descriptions of her secret are breathtaking. The poor girl who has to redeem herself through her spelling never quite seems real - her brother's angst about religion and growing up are however perfectly delineated.
Very highly recommended.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed this, way more than I was expecting. I will have to watch the film, I suspect it may not be completely true to the book.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

One might think this was an uplifting story about a young girl who learns and grows as she discovers her talent for spelling bees. But this is more so a very dark portrait of a highly dysfunctional family with the spelling bee as the catalyst for a cascade of events. The story begins with Eliza, an eleven year old girl, an underachiever, over-shadowed by her clever, older brother, whose status is catapulted upward by her gift for spelling. Her dad Saul, a cantor at a synagogue, house husband, and student of Jewish mysticism, is overjoyed, shifting his focus from Aaron, the older brother, to "Ellie". Miriam, Ellie's mother, is a workaholic, clean freak, detached from the rest of the family. The novel starts as an engaging story of a quirky family. I even had thoughts of Ann Tyler as I read. The Jewish mysticism seemed to add an interesting element to the story. But the story devolves in the second half. The family's dysfunction is extreme and, quite frankly, creepily disturbing. I gave the book 3 stars for it's originality and the early promise. But I found the latter parts of the novel repugnant. And the prose was dense and seemed to weigh down the narrative.