Definitely took me 60 pages to realize this book has no chapters lol.

The writing is phenomenal. Even though the plot is very slow, I enjoy books with a lot of character development. I just wish this was 20 pages longer because I have some unanswered questions.

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”.

I'm not sure what to even say about this one. Watching a family fall apart little by little.

I was reluctant in reading this book at first because it is called "Bee Season" and it seemed very boring and anti-climatic. However, I gave it a try and it is completely different than what the back cover tells you. Eliza Naumann is eleven years old and she is the quite the outcast of her family. No one believes her when she participates and does really well in her school spelling bees. Her father, Saul Naumann is a Jewish priest is training. Her mother is a successful lawyer. Her brother is the brains of the family, who is studying the Hebrew texts and is the family favorite. As the story develops and Eliza's spelling bee studies become more rigorous, the family's secrets begin to unfold. Each one of the seemingly perfect family members all of dark secrets of their own, all of which are not normal and are looked down upon. The book really deceived me. As the book developed, it just revealed more and more about how a "perfect" family can have so many dark secrets. In the end the family is torn apart by all the secrets and obsessions. I just thought that the author was really brilliant in deceiving the audience. In fact, I was skeptical that the book was going to be climatic at all but it indeed was. If you give this book a chance and get through the few introductory chapters, you will be in for a twisted ride.

This is an amazing novel: a young girl, not in the Talented and Gifted classes like her smart brother, wins the spelling bee. Suddenly she comes into focus for their cantor father who starts tutoring her in spelling and eventually in Jewish mysticism. I highly recommend this book.

It was like reading a slow motion train wreck. Strangely enough I intend that as high praise in this context.

I want to give this book 10 stars. I have chills after finishing it.

Onvan : Bee Season - Nevisande : Myla Goldberg - ISBN : 385498802 - ISBN13 : 9780385498807 - Dar 275 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2000

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.

I don't generally read this kind of fiction. It was crazy enough that I followed it this dysfunctional family's journey to the end. Which I hated. But the writing was crisp and beautiful, and the look into this family and a different culture was a voyeur's dream.

Whoa! Why the hell did she do that?

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.