Bee Season: A Novel
by Myla Goldberg
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Book Summary Information
Author: Myla GoldbergEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-05-15
ISBN: 0385498802
Number of pages: 275
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of Bee Season: A Novel
Book Review: Lives lived elsewhere
Summary: 5 Stars
My title comes from a throwaway line near the end of this fine, moving, and thought-provoking book. The four members of what appear to be a closely-knit Jewish intellectual family may live together physically, but we come to see that their inner lives are lived alone and elswhere: in utopian fantasies, in extreme beliefs, in the mental retreat into mysticism.
At first, though, the book seems set to be a ROCKY of the mind. Ugly duckling Eliza Naumann, the underachieving second child in an intellectual family, reveals an unexpected talent for spelling which carries her through the finals of the National Bee. At this level, the book is far better than most, and especially interesting for its portrayal of a Jewish family (father a cantor, mother a lawyer, son hoping to become a rabbi). It is a portrait painted with inside knowledge and especially an uncritical love that enables the author to speak equally sympathetically through each of the four different voices.
However, Eliza's early success does not end the story but instead becomes a catalyst for the family's transformation, taking the novel into much darker territory. Each of the four characters sees him- or herself pursuing a higher spiritual quest, bringing moments of radiant transcendence (so that even the latter half is by no means entirely dark), but separating them from reality. As one approaches the end of the novel, the power that keeps one reading (for the book is very hard to put down) changes imperceptibly from expectation of success to anticipation of some spectacular failure. It says a lot for Myla Goldberg's writing that this latter part is every bit as persuasive as the earlier story, and that even the more melodramatic moments are softened by sensitive observation and sympathetic understanding. And in a stroke of the utmost simplicity at the very end, she manages to steer away from total disaster and suggest the possibility of healing.
One reader on this site saw the father, Saul, as the spider in the web, and I think this is true. But he is not a villain. Rather, he is a deeply religious and loving man trying to do good, but choosing a route that takes him away from normal social connections. A larger theme is the power of certain kinds of religious pursuit to do more harm than good. But it only applies to the extremes of religious devotion; it is not a critique of religion, per se, and certainly not of Judaism -- although this would be a different book if it were not so strongly localized within a Jewish family. It is a book that makes one think -- after it has had you first cheering on the sidelines, then clinging on to this particular family's roller-coaster for dear life!
Summary of Bee Season: A Novel
Eliza Naumann, a seemingly unremarkable nine-year-old, expects never to fit into her gifted family: 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.
In Myla Goldberg's outstanding first novel, a family is shaken apart by a small but unexpected shift in the prospects of one of its members. When 9-year-old Eliza Naumann, an otherwise indifferent student, takes first prize in her school spelling bee, it is as if rays of light have begun to emanate from her head. Teachers regard her with a new fondness; the studious girls begin to save a place for her at lunch. Even Eliza can sense herself changing. She had "often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see."
Eliza's father, Saul, a scholar and cantor, had long since given up expecting sparks of brilliance on her part. While her brother, Aaron, had taken pride in reciting his Bar Mitzvah prayers from memory, she had typically preferred television reruns to homework or reading. This belated evidence of a miraculous talent encourages Saul to reassess his daughter. And after she wins the statewide bee, he begins tutoring her for the national competition, devoting to Eliza the hours he once spent with Aaron. His daughter flowers under his care, eventually coming to look at life "in alphabetical terms." "Consonants are the camels of language," she realizes, "proudly carrying their lingual loads."
Vowels, however, are a different species, the fish that flash and glisten in the watery depths. Vowels are elastic and inconstant, fickle and unfaithful.... Before the bee, Eliza had been a consonant, slow and unsurprising. With her bee success, she has entered vowelhood.When Saul sees the state of transcendence that she effortlessly achieves in competition, he encourages his daughter to explore the mystical states that have eluded him--the influx of God-knowledge (shefa) described by the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. Although Saul has little idea what he has set in motion, "even the sound of Abulafia's name sets off music in her head. A-bu-la-fi-a. It's magic, the open sesame that unblocked the path to her father and then to language itself."
Meanwhile, stunned by his father's defection, Aaron begins a troubling religious quest. Eliza's brainy, compulsive mother is also unmoored by her success. The spelling champion's newfound gift for concentration reminds Miriam of herself as a girl, and she feels a pang for not having seen her daughter more clearly before. But Eliza's clumsy response to Miriam's overtures convinces her mother that she has no real ties to her daughter. This final disappointment precipitates her departure into a stunning secret life. The reader is left wondering what would have happened if the Naumanns' spiritual thirsts had not been set in restless motion. A poignant and exceptionally well crafted tale, Bee Season has a slow beginning but a tour-de-force conclusion. --Regina Marler
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