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Bee Season
Myla Goldberg. Knopf: 2001 (paperback). ISBN: 0385498802. 288 pages.
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You may have noticed the readers, authors, booksellers, and critics jostling
each other off the platform in their excitement to speak on behalf of this very unusual book-no surprise, as Goldberg's
debut novel indicates the arrival of a very exciting and very unusual writer. Bee Season tells the story of a young girl
who astonishes everyone, most of all herself, by rising from the ranks of elementary school mediocrity to become a
spelling-bee champion. Her father, a struggling scholar of Jewish mysticism, takes Eliza's triumph as a sign that she
possesses a metaphysical gift he may be lacking. As Saul takes over his daughter's training in the secret science of
permutation, his once-favored son Aaron, a socially awkward adolescent, is left to make his own spiritual discoveries.
Saul's wife Miriam doesn't notice that her husband is turning her daughter into an ancient mystic, nor that her son is
becoming a Hare Krishna, as she is too busy stealing objects from other people's homes to recreate the flawless world of
Perfectimundo that exists only in her mind. Goldberg's novel is a fascinating and extremely readable study of the way that
four family members struggle to satisfy their deepest and most unanswerable needs, while remaining oblivious to needs of
their nearest and dearest.
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