 Bee Season (2001)
I was first introduced to Bee Season as one of those "new and noteworthy" selections at one of the larger bookstore chains. It looked intriguing, but not enough to purchase. Looked like a good book for a ladies-only book club. When my wife joined such a club shortly thereafter, I suggested the book, mainly as a first step toward my goal of turning this club into a harem. It actually passed the vote (no doubt in between talk of tampons and the Equal Rights Amendment), and the ladies enjoyed it immensely. A month or so afterward, after wifey and company were done blowing me, I sat down in my easy chair and started reading Bee Season myself.
And nearly creamed my jeans from page the first. The book is amazing. It tells the story of a 9 year-old girl named Elly, unremarkable in all respects except that she can spell. A class bee turns into a school bee, then local then state then national.
All well and good, and pretty uninteresting on the surface, and potentially really saccharine. But Goldberg – whose first novel this is – is one of the few writers who can take a mundane situation and transform it into something truly magical. Her descriptions of simple objects and events are often achingly beautiful, and her grasp of hidden emotions is uncanny.
So while the book is technically about Elly's spelling bee spree, it's really about the unraveling of a middle-class Jewish family and how each of them – father, wife, son and daughter – desperately wants a connection to each other and some higher power, but is thwarted at every turn by their own confusion and unfortunate humanness.
The one element that sets this book even further apart is the inclusion of Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. With Madonna and Roseanne all into it, Kabbalah is getting unfair attention as cultish and superficial.
But Goldberg's approach is deeper and more esoteric (though far less boner-worthy) than Britney Spears wearing a red string to ward off "the evil eye." Elly's father, a frustrated Kabbalist, senses in his daughter an ability to really connect with the universe in the highest form known to spirituality. As she preps for the national bee, her father trains her in Kabbalistic techniques to connect with the letters, which form themselves in Elly's mind like those crystals that grow when you put them in water (yes, that is the best metaphor I could come up with … I'm no Myla Goldberg).
Elly's journey is mirrored by her brother's quest to find a religion he likes, and her mother's increasingly bizarre behavior, and her father's manic push to get Elly to the top of the spiritual and spellitual universe. They're all looking for God, and formerly nondescript Elly may be the only one who knows how to get there.
There's barely a word wasted or overwritten (though admittedly a few passages could have been trimmed for length). Goldberg gets it right all the way to the last line, which left me with that pang of loss you get upon finishing a book that you really love. It's a truly poignant and meaningful book, and I expect Goldberg's going to have a tough time ever matching it – much like me and my first novel, Nympho Island, will likely be what I'm remembered for (expect Return to Nympho Island soon).
Popular reviews would indicate that this book is too "weird" for a mainstream audience. But after a string of so-so to bad reads lately, Bee Season very much restored my faith in the written word.
Review by Crimedog |
