Okay this book actually deserves 3.5 stars. It's a specimen of excellent storytelling. Every character is unique and intriguing in his or her own way, they all have compelling arcs. Toward the end, the book is unputdownable. Now if Goldberg would only throw a few pronouns into her sentences, I'd give it 4 stars :P

It seemed that everyone was talking about some "bee book" so I mistakenly picked this up. Come to find that The Secret Life of Bees was the "bee book" that was so popular. Instead, I read Goldberg's odd tale of an eccentric Jewish family and was sorely disappointed. Never did get around to reading Secret Life...

"When three days pass without a word, Eliza, so accustomed to being disappointing, begins to wonder if the singularity of this, her first achievement, has caused her to over-inflate its importance. Spelling, after all, is a skill made redundant by the dictionary."

"Miriam Naumann... the silver in her hair makes her seem electric, her head a nest of metal wires extending through her body. Eliza can only imagine the super charged brain that resides inside, generally equates her mother's head with the grand finale of a July fourth fireworks display."

"The experience is so intensely personal that it never occurs to Aaron to share it with anyone, this extending his belief in an all-knowing, all-present God five years longer than if someone had had the opportunity to inform him he'd only witnessed the red blinker of the plane's wing."

"The same woman who moments ago had been exhorting Eliza and the others to urinate approaches the microphone. Her voice sounds like a soft-focus greeting card cover."

"There is no combination the vowels haven't tried, exhaustive and incestuous in their couplings... Eliza prefers the vowels unpredictability and, of all vowels, favors y. Y defies categorization, the only letter than can be two things at once."

"After she spells it correctly she spots her father in the audience when he is the only one standing during the applause. She considers waving but decides that it is too uncool. She tries a droll wink but is unable to manage the eyelid coordination and looks instead as if she has something stuck in her eye."

"He wants to run to his daughter standing so completely still on stage with her eyes closed and yell, before it is too late, QUICK, OPEN YOUR EYES! THIS IS WHAT I LOOK LIKE WHEN I BELIEVE IN YOU!"

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.

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

I was sad I read this book.

When I worked at one of the many bookstores, I avoided this one because (and I did no research here) I thought it was about beekeeping. What finally spurred me into reading it was the realization that it was about spelling bees. Dur!

Only ... it’s not really about that, either. It’s about a family of four and the very, very different ways they uncover their spirituality. If that sounds dull or off-putting, trust me that it’s not. Goldberg has an exciting and energetic way of allowing readers into these characters’ spiritual and religious journeys without ever feeling like she’s pandering or proselytizing. Even the character whose entire religion is based on theft and mental illness seems sound enough when you’re in their head.

But Goldberg doesn’t condemn, only reveals; what, she occasionally seems to ask, is a person’s relationship to their spiritual self if not a sort of mental aberration from the norm? All four of these characters - married couple Saul and Miriam, their teenage son Aaron, and tween Eliza - find God (or a reasonable facsimile) in radically different ways ... but all, in the end, in selfish ways that end up hurting others.

What’s fascinating is that all four of these people could seem terrible - and often do seem terrible from others’ perspective - but Goldberg compels you into their stories and their actions and you can’t hate any of them.

The ordering of letters into words - the backbone of modern communication - is where this book starts. As Bee Season attests, once you start breaking words down into components, start hoarding your communication and keeping it secret, it gets harder and harder to put it all back together again.

I loved this book.

Mental Health and the entire family

This is a well written book that focuses on the impact that the mental health problems of one family member has on the other members. It is difficult to detect whether severe mental problems causes mental health problems for one other family member or for all of them. The person identified as mentally ill might have been driven into it by another family member who doesn't recognize what he is doing to her. The reader is as confused as the family members at some points in the narrative.

I did this on audiobook, and the author does a great job reading her work. The prose is stunning and reads almost like poetry. I did have to skip some of the parts written from a mentally ill character's point of view—it just became too disturbing for me—but otherwise, I enjoyed every minute. Goldberg has such deep insight into the effects of mental illness on the whole family. While there is some disagreement about the ending among Goodreads reviewers, I personally thought the end was brilliant. A wonderful book to enliven the commute to work!

I'm a seasoned Myla Goldberg reader now, after my second reading of Bee Season. I've read two of her other books as well - n  The False Friendn and n  Wickett's Remedyn - and enjoyed both of them immensely. But Goldberg's debut novel remains my favorite.

Bee Season is the story of a family falling apart at the seams. The Naumanns have lived for years in a delicate balance. Saul, the patriarch, is confident that he knows and understands every member of his family and prides himself on his understanding and ability to help them all be the very best people they can be. Miriam, his wife, is an obsessive-compulsive neat-freak of an attorney who doesn't seem to really know what to do with any member of her family, especially her children. Aaron, the eldest child, is a teenager struggling with his life-long Jewish beliefs and his recent loss of his father's attention. He loses his dad's attention when Eliza, the youngest, unexpectedly proves herself to be a spelling bee prodigy after a lifetime, to that point, of absolute academic mediocrity. The day of Eliza's first two bees - winning her class bee and then the school bee - is the day that upsets the delicate balance and sends the family spiraling toward disaster.

I've read in other reviews that they didn't like this book because the family is dysfunctional. Well...DUH. Did you want to read a story about a perfectly happy family? Of course not; how boring that would be. The Naumanns are absolutely dysfunctional, but they're fascinating. I've been dissecting the book a bit more in my head this time, and I think I've come up with two main points from the book: first, none of us ever truly know any other person, no matter how close to them we think we are; and second, that placing our own expectations on other people is at best pointless and at worst destructive. Every bad thing that happens in the book is brought about by the heavy weight of one person trying and failing to live up to another person's expectations. That cycle is brought to an end on the last page, when Eliza intentionally shrugs off her father's expectations of her, hoping that will begin a process of healing for her family.

I still love this book. The second time around I still eagerly devoured it in less than 24 hours. I am still blown away by its beauty and complexity in such a quick read.

Following is my original review from the first time I read this book in 2007. Holy shit. That's about all I can say after having finished this book in less than 24 hours. I am completely blown away by the intensity portrayed here and the weird interconnectedness Goldberg brings to spelling bees and Kabbalism and Eastern mysticism and family dynamics and mental illness and giftedness... It is a book that defies description, and one of the best and most powerful I've ever read.

I first read this book for Muir when it was a possibility to teach it for one of the writing classes. I loved the book, but I couldn't see any way to teach it, to make it fit the requirements of finding an argument in a text and defending it with evidence from the story.

I picked up a copy of the book for myself from the library for 10 cents. So I had to read my own copy (as I eventually always do). But I also wanted to read it again, to go over it without racing to find out the ending, while knowing what was coming and looking for clues.

I still don't know what it means. I still don't know what the argument is. I still love it.

Each character is flawed but dealt with compassionately. Each one has problems and makes mistakes and no one is the villain. The space between them is the villain, but it's almost an inevitable one: they can't communicate exactly across their distances, they anticipate the others' needs but miss the mark, they fold back into themselves and their own pursuits when they can't make themselves understood.

Where do we find God? For Saul, religion or spirituality is a vocation, a way of making a living that leaves room for his own spiritual pursuits (and sexual ones before that). For Miriam, her universe makes sense and is beautiful, but it leaves her completely isolated and on the wrong side of the law. For Aaron, he leaves one rote performance of words and memorized prayers for another--at least the latter is chosen. For Eliza, spelling is a means of connection to her father and the meditation that accompanies it is a way to make sense of the world and heal it, with her at the center. And yet, all of these pursuits, while creating connections (temporary, a lot of the times) and producing beauty and giving these characters meaning in their lives, none of them connect to each other. They are disconnected in the end. Maybe Aaron has a chance at community with his new group, but the rest of the family is isolated, one apart from the other. And I don't understand it. Is the search for the divine inherently isolating? Are these pursuits somehow false because the search for the divine SHOULD lead to connection and in each of these cases doesn't? I really don't know. I'm not sure what she's saying. Is contemporary society somehow to blame? The craving for attention and praise, the machinery of school that shunts people onto certain paths and defines them before they are even fully formed, the consumer society devoid of connection? The sanitized religions of the present, shorn of their suffering and most of their meaning? Or is obsession just another word for divine-seeking? All those kids at the bee who have their personal tics and ways of coping. Are they any different that Saul's guitar, Miriam's objects, Aaron's prayer beads? And what does it mean that Miriam is rendered "mentally ill" while the others are various versions of "normal," even if unfulfilled and dissatisfied? Again, maybe Aaron isn't, but he's losing his family in the process (but what exactly is he losing, as it becomes clear that he WAS Saul's chosen disciple and his rejection of Judaism is being taken as rebellion or challenge or spite when Eliza emerges as the new/true disciple?).

I don't know. I kind of don't want to read any other reviews. I don't really want to talk about this book with anyone. I just want to sit with my uncertainty and unease and keep it for myself.

Bee Season / 0-385-49880-2

How many ways can you approach God? Quiet, unassuming Eliza finds him in the spelling of words. Shy, frightened Aaron finds him in the singing and dancing of the Hare Krishnas. Distant, insane Miriam finds him in the colors and patterns of a kaleidoscope. And domineering, authoritarian Saul finds him in the strumming of his guitar in the Jewish temple.

"Bee Season" is a remarkably compelling work, with a narrative that sucks the reader in immediately. The story jumps around from the different viewpoints and recollections of the four family members, but the jumps are incredibly easy to follow and understand with the end result that each family member ends up being carefully treasured by the reader. The family is a distant one, but functional, and its members do not realize just how close everything is to falling apart. A single thread out of place will cause the family to crumble; this thread is provided when the hitherto unremarkable Eliza suddenly wins the school spelling bee.

When this happens, the quietly domineering Saul immediately abandons his older, favored son Aaron in order to focus entirely on young Elly. While Saul immerses his youngest child in the secrets of the Cabbala in an attempt to make her "see God" via hours of daily spelling sessions, Aaron is left to drift aimlessly apart from his now-distant family. Abandoning his Jewish heritage, he joins the Hare Krishnas, who welcome him with the love and understanding he longs to receive from his family. Meanwhile, the distant Miriam slips further into her carefully hidden schizophrenia and begins compulsively stealing from private homes.

As the family quickly crumbles apart, Saul reacts with hostility and anger to his sudden loss of control over his family and lifestyle. In the wake of his wife's eventual incarceration in a mental hospital, he lashes out violently at his son, excoriating him for his new religion. Elly, the youngest member of the family and the remaining functional adult, instinctively recognizes that her father must be robbed of the last vestiges of control if he is to ever recognize that it is *people*, not *goals*, that are truly important in life.

~ Ana Mardoll

The writing style was unique and resonated with my angsty Jewish former-spelling-obsessed self.