Completely unsure what I thought this would be like to read, and still think it's nothing like what I expected. Very odd relationships. Very sad relationships.

Haters be damned yall don’t get it you just don’t get it my heart is racing there are tears in my eyes

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.

A book about sacrificing yourself for those you love. A book about finding yourself.
I thought the author made very whole characters. The plot was good and the ending left you wanting more from the family’s story.

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.

Absolutely incredible. Haven't read a book like this in a while. Deals with family, enlightenment, Jewishness, mental illness. Very very very very Jewey, like as Jewey as I like it. Myla Goldberg is incredible with words. She's expansive and her descriptions are so lovely. I haven't read a book in a second, maybe since "Toward a Hot Jew" by Miriam Libicki, that resonated with me like this. I just need to read more books by Jewish women. Like I need it. It makes me feel connected to my people and makes me feel more like myself.

An interesting connection: I was recommended to read books by Myla Goldberg by a woman who goes to my synagogue. At the end of the audiobook (Myla Goldberg is an incredible narrator as well), there is an author interview with Recorded Books. The question comes up of how did Goldberg know about Jewish mysticism, besides being Jewish. She mentioned she took a class in college with a name that sounded familiar, Elliot Ginsburg, who also goes to my synagogue, who was the dad of a friend of my sister's from growing up. It turns out that he used to teach at Oberlin, where Goldberg went, and his teaching her about Abraham Abulafia strongly influenced her writing of this book. WOW. IT'S ALL CONNECTED THROUGH ANN ARBOR JEWRY.

In the words of a wise woman: "Myla Goldberg x 1 billion."

Pretty sad book

An incredible feat of a first novel. Of a tenth novel for that matter.

This is the story of a family and the secrets held by each of the members. Told over the arc of two seasons of spelling bees, the relationships between the various dyads are very finely drawn. Each family member is experiencing a kind of very personal suffering or angst, and the novel weaves their stories into a sort of coat of many colours.

It is not a sad book per se, but we meet these characters as they struggle to be true to themselves with sometimes unexpected results.

Highly recommended.

the most extremely montgomery county, md novel i have ever read, even though it purports to take place in montgomery county, pa.

also this novel has a glaring inaccuracy in that, in my person experience as somebody who also is deeply neurotic and prone to periodic quasi-gnostic delusions, the failures in my life happen sequentially, rather than all at once.

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, is not the domestic type. Miriam, meanwhile, is haunted by her quest to reach Perfectimundo, a state in which everything is perfectly clean, sterile, and in its correct place. And then there's Eliza, who is tracked as a lower-achieving student in second grade and manages to float through life on a cloud of after-school sitcoms, achieving nothing out of the ordinary until she rockets to the national spelling bee in fifth grade. What follows is the family's gradual collapse, helped along by Aaron's decision to find God in the Hare Krishna faith, Miriam's schizophrenic kleptomania, and Saul's newly-found belief that his daughter can be trained to become a direct link to God based on her talents with letters. Eliza, thrilled at the prospect of her father finally noticed her, plays along until the bitter end when everything snaps. Bee Season is gut-wrenching and by its end, makes the reader feel like he might have descended into the darkness that this family inhabits. Goldberg is a gifted writer, and I look forward to reading more of her work, if perhaps of a more optimistic slant.

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.

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.