Bee Season

Written by Myla Goldberg

Narrated by Myla Goldberg

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 15, 2008
• ISBN: 9781449801076

Myla Goldberg

Myla Goldberg is the bestselling author of Feast Your Eyes, The False Friend, Wickett’s Remedy, and Bee Season, which was a New York Times Notable Book, a winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, and was adapted to film and widely translated.

Reviews for Bee Season

[sanyamakadi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was not what I expected it to be. I thought it was going to be a story of a girl who overcomes adversity to make it to the national spelling bee. That did happen, but that story line played itself out within the first hundred pages. Then it transitioned into a story of a family in which each person was living his or her own life apart from everyone else, with each on their own quest for meaning, perfection, and understanding of the divine. The content got heavier and heavier, and less and less tied to reality. I actually like books about religion and mysticism, and had I been looking for that at this time, I probably would have liked this book much better. As it was, I just ended up frustrated at reading yet another story about unfulfilled, unhappy people.

[fernemysteryreader · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A portrait of one dysfunctional family. The author seemed to want to incorporate many different types of dysfunction into one story. From my perspective, I'm not sure it succeeds in the telling of all of them. The ending is abrupt but I was ready for the the novel to end.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Brilliant, original, fascinating - and I thank my lucky stars I wasn't born into that family. I read it because the focus is about the daughter's unexpected prowess in spelling bees, but the book really revolves around the family and all their odd interactions. Not a cheerful or uplifting book, though it does encourage our faith in hope and in resiliency.

[dele2451 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L. If I hadn't seen the cover first, I would have guessed this was written by a significantly older and more experienced writer with a shelf full of literary awards.

[klburnside · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

before i started reading this, i thought this book was about bees, like the insect. then i thought it was about spelling bees. then all the sudden it was about jewish mysticism. i became increasingly less interested as the book progressed.

there was something about the verb tense of this book that i just found kind of annoying and pretentious. it made it seem as if nothing was ever really happening, and everything was a dream or something like that.

at the beginning i really liked the characters, but towards the end as they were supposed to become more interesting, for me, they became unlikable.

my main issues with the book were that i really didn't like the mysticism and the theme of spelling somehow being a means of transcendence or whatever was going on with eliza.

when characters in books have odd little quirks or major dysfunctions, i often find it makes me like the characters more. in this book i just found no redeeming qualities in any of the characters. i really didn't care what happened to anyone in the family and i thought that all of their spiritual/emotional journeys were kind of boring.

but all that being said, somehow i mostly enjoyed reading this book until about the last 60 pages, and i'm still giving it three stars instead of two... because i did mostly like it until the end.

[wareagle78 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A facinating study of a family of four, each trying to find the piece of themselves not provided by their lives, their family relationships, or their religion. With Zmrzlina, I'm not sure eccentric is the term I'd use to describe them. Incredibly needy, perhaps. Untethered. The heroine, Eliza, is a particularly engaging girl; the mother, conspicuous by her absence in the early story lines, achingly mad. The father Saul, who turned years ago from a background of hallucinogenic seeking, nevertheless tries for a God-invoked nirvana. And the brother Aaron becomes increasingly disengaged from the family as Saul turns from him to heap time, pride, love and expectations on Eliza.A very worthwhile book, especially for a first work.

[thatotter-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Compelling despite the unlikeliness of the plot.

[dubaireader · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Tedious.Oh my goodness, I thought this book would never end. I was listening to the unabridged audiobook, narrated by the author, whose voice was soooo slow that the book took even longer than it needed to. I have a policy of giving one star if I abandon a book and two if I make it to the end, but I very nearly downgraded this to one star because the ending was such a flop. Nothing was resolved and Eliza's act at the end was so unbelievably annoying.Eliza Nauman, at nine years old, is a mediocre student. So when she wins the class spelling bee and gains a place at the district finals, her father (Saul) abandons everything to coach her to success, and her older brother Aaron has to sacrifice his guitar sessions with his Dad. There was a lot of obsession in this novel; Aaron's reaction to his father's neglect and Saul's wife's strange behaviour, as well as intensive study of words and their origins. I was really uninspired by the lengthy descriptions of the 'A-ness of A' and how an A felt to Eliza. Then there was the philosopher Abulafia and his strange ideas about words and their permutations. When Eliza sends herself into a trance I was completely lost, too weird.So what did I enjoy about this novel? Well, not much, unfortunately, but I loved the collection that Eliza's mother made. I wished I could have seen it.This book was not at all what I had expected - a lightweight coming of age novel with a spelling bent. Instead I got a tediously descriptive, drawn out philosophical and religious treatise. Not for me I'm afraid.

[_________jt_________ · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Bee Season left me confused and slightly-swindled-feeling. The dissonance, I suppose, results from a certain wishing-to-have-cake-and-eat-it-too impression that I got. On the one hand, it seems to want to show how there are many paths toward personal and spiritual transcendence; on the other hand, it wants to be a miserable downer about familial dissolution. These things don't really go together, so Goldberg is forced to pull the cork just as everything goes to hell for everybody involved, cheating the reader out of any resolution from either the spiritual-journey or miserable-family angle.The Naumann family, who all yearn for excuses to escape one another, finally get them when young daughter Eliza wins her school spelling bee. As a result, overbearing patriarch Saul decides to engage Eliza in hours-long one-on-one spelling sessions, using thousand-year-old hogwash for textbooks. Their evenings no longer taken up with being annoyed to death by Saul, mother Miriam and brother Aaron use their newly free time to follow their own rigidly parallel paths toward transcendence. While Eliza rearranges words in her head a whole bunch in search of Enlightenment (the Jewish version of which, I guess, is called, shefa). Aaron joins Hare Krishna to take his mind off the constant swirlies he receives at school, and Miriam burgles her way to miraculous feats of interior decoration. Goldberg takes great care to make sure we notice just how similar these activities are to each other; Aaron's ceaseless chanting mirrors Eliza's meditative anagramming, and Miriam's sculpture just applies the same obsessive tendencies to found-object art. With brief interludes so that Saul can provide stock bad-father moments and drive his children and wife further up the wall, things proceed thusly until the end the novel, when everybody reaches their spiritual journey's climax on the exact same day. Because it's just more convenient that way, is why. All right?Eliza has an intensely spiritual epileptic seizure which, it seems, we are supposed to believe has driven her over the edge into full-blown shefa. Aaron leaves home to pursue his dream of being a vegetarian chef at the temple, and Miriam is finally caught, bringing her eighteen-year klepto spree to an end. At this point, Goldberg seems to have written herself into a corner: if this thing is to really follow through on these characters' stories, it needs at least three hundred more pages of the characters acting almost completely independently of one another, which would break the family-drama mold that has been so faithfully clung to so far. Plus, Goldberg has just changed her main character into a Kabbalah superhero, which is just kind of weird. Really? It just worked? She read the books and flipped around the letters and it worked. Can everybody do that? Can I level-up my letter-flipping skills till I reach shefa too? Sadly, the path to transcendence hasn't worked out so well for the other protagonists: Aaron appears to be on some sort of spiritual journey, but the last thing we see him do is pretty much give the finger to Dad as he drives away, which doesn't really sound like a great start on the road toward inner peace, and the last we know of Miriam is that she's cackling to herself in Arkham Asylum.I'm wondering why things are supposed to have worked out so well for Eliza, but not for Aaron and Miriam. It seems like the whole point of the novel, up until the last ten pages, is that Eliza's, Aaron's, and Miriam's spiritual journeys are just different aspects of the very same crippling OCD. Ha ha, no, really though, Goldberg seems to be making a case for a Unitarianism of all religions, until she decides to just drop it and declare that nope, Abulafia really had it right all along. The Eliza-superhero cannot be reconciled with the thrust of the entire rest of the novel. It just doesn't make any sense.I feel that Goldberg, in trying to wrap up the mess her book had become, followed a similar path as I take when trying to wrap Christmas gifts. At first, I proceed carefully, measuring the paper to match the dimensions of the gift. As I proceed, though, I find I have made some miscalculation, and having no more paper to try again with, attempt to cheat to make everything fit together nicely. Finally, though, I am forced to admit to myself that this whole wrapping thing just hasn't gone according to plan, and I take big swaths of duct tape and press them over the more egregiously horrible spots, and I brace myself for the derisive laughter of my relatives. Bee Season is that hastily-wrapped-up, not-quite-all-together gift.But overall, it didn't suck too bad.

[dukefan86 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I listened to the audiobook version, and I was glad to hear the story in the author's own voice--it added a lot. My favorite part of the book was the Eliza's run to the National Spelling Bee. Beyond that, the dysfunctions of various members of the family loomed so large that it became a bit draining to finish the audiobook. If you're looking for an uplifting book about a child's spelling success, this one isn't it. Still, the book was very thought-provoking.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

To say that this book left me puzzled is an understatement. I really enjoyed Goldberg's careful construct: a seemingly normal family slowly coming apart due to miscommunication, mental illness, religious fanaticism and plain old teenage growing up. I also really enjoyed the discussion around religion: a child's acceptance, a teen's questioning, an adult's embracing. I also liked the fact that there are no easy answers: mom doesn't come home, Aaron doesn't agree and dad doesn't have all the answers.This is definitely what makes the end so powerful, but my real question is: has Elly really achieved enlightenment or is she schizophrenic like her mother (or epileptic)? I guess that's for each reader to determine according to each one's beliefs...This is not what I expected, but a book that I will cherish in all its weirdness and questions, loving but broken relationships and intriguing look at meditation in all its forms.

[littlesparrow-1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

What could have been a wonderful book, and one full of depth turns out to be a very screwed up book, just as it's characters are. Too many twists in the plot and they get you nowhere, characters don't really change at all, you just get to see this kind of puppets being puppets all through the book and having no backbone or real character or even a real plot to go with.
It's very sad it disappointed me so much, since I was expecting something better, it being made a movie and some people I think highly of recommending it to me.

[rkreish_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I liked it but didn't love it, but I didn't despise it like the loud members of my former book group did. Thank goodness I found a cooler book group!

[quirkylibrarian · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Unfinished as of this review and don't know if I can bring myself to spend any more time with this cast of unlikable and fairly uninteresting characters. While each person displays elements of the curiosities of human nature (Miriam steals, Aaron seeks religious truth) the pacing is stodgy and in 168 pages Goldberg hasn't given me, the reader, any reason to care what happens to any of them.

[indygo88 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of a fairly unspectacular young girl (Eliza) -- unspectactular that is, until she wins her school's spelling bee, then goes on to compete in larger bees. Up to this point, her brother & father have had a fairly close relationship, but once she wins the bee, her father's attentions shift entirely toward her. Thus begins the change in the dynamics of the entire family: father, mother, son, & daughter. Eliza's world is centered solely on expanding her knowledge & achieving greater success, nurtured by her father's "grooming." Her brother, meanwhile, is left out in the cold and begins a journey of self-discovery, ending up in the world of the Hare Krishna. And her mother's hidden obsession begins to take control of her own life. However, all of these events happen independently of each other, with each member of the family oblivious to what's going on with the other family members. Eventually it all comes to a head, but will it destroy the family or make them more real?I thought this was an especially well-written book. I liked the writing style -- it really clicked with me. Sometimes the spiritual stuff got a little "out there", but it was a very thought-provoking story. I did the audio version, read by the author, who I thought did an exceptional job reading her own work (which is not always the case when authors do their own reading). I look forward to other books by Myla Goldberg.

[sakismom · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Starts well, but fails to deliver. The main character, 10-year-old Eliza, surprises her achievement-oriented father by winning the district spelling championship. But then all kinds of Kabalistic mysticism takes over and an otherwise good story is, in my opinion, waylaid.1 starRead 8/2000

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This dysfunctional family is looking for love in all the wrong places. As the story begins, we think this is just a “normal” dysfunctional family, but as the book progresses, we feel the horror of watching helplessly as the problems of the parents affect the children, who start out shy but hopeful, and with a chance in life….Eliza Naumann is eleven, and in a class “where the unimpressive fifth graders are put.” Then, inexplicably to all, she wins the school spelling bee. Suddenly her father Saul, previously pretty much oblivious to her existence, abandons nurturing her gifted older brother Aaron in order to coach Eliza to the finals. In the process, the wax effigy of a family that these characters have carefully constructed dissolves as they fly, independently and together, too close to the sun.As their worlds fall apart they transmute psychologically into whirling dervishes, needing to exert more and more regulation into the small parts of their worlds they can control. They never figure out that each of them is looking for the same thing, and that being honest and open with each other is their only chance to get it. Discussion: There are so many rich layers to this torte of a book: the secret interior lives kept from one another that are being taken to crazy extremes; the hilarious and frightening way in which each family member's secret behaviors echoes the others’ pyschoses; the power of rituals to bind people; the power of rituals to ward off fear; the power of rituals to take over meaning until no meaning is left – just the rite; the sins (and illnesses) of the fathers (and mothers) being visited upon the children; and hovering above it all, the power of words. Words play a large symbolic role in this story. They are Eliza’s ticket out of her crazy family, but her father Saul, a frustrated Jewish mystic, is determined to transform Eliza’s talent with words into the ability to see God, as instructed by the 13th Century mystic Abraham Abulafia. Aaron, unaware of what his father and sister are doing, also wants desperately to communicate with God, and learns the words from a Hare Krishna sect to help him do it. And it is the search for transcendence as expressed by the word “perfectimundo" that has driven the mother, Miriam, to insanity.Evaluation: Bee Season was a New York Times Notable Book for 2000, winner of the Borders New Voices Prize, and a finalist for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN award, the NYPL Young Lions award, and the Barnes & Noble Discover award. The character study of the two young people is masterful; the adults seem "empty,” but perhaps that is only a reflection of who they are: cardboard adults in the improbable position of parenting. They were also children of parents who sapped them of all hope and happiness. This affecting book is emotionally draining. The results of the absence of engaged and caring parenting on four damaged people are heartbreaking.

[frannyor_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I wish I had read the book before I saw the movie. As it was, I felt a certain dread as I read, knowing what was unfolding before it unfolded. Yet both the movie and the book were outstanding in their own ways.The Saul character (the father) is incredible. A stay at home dad, he's so immersed in studying Hebrew texts that he is clueless about his family. If the kids don't show signs of extraordinariness, he's not interested. And how he could be so wrong about his wife for, it seems, the entire 18-year marriage? What good is all the book learning if he can't function adequately in life?The child Eliza has a learning style that not much is known about--synesthesia-- although that term is not used in the book. Synesthetic learners take in information from all their senses, and sometimes it the senses overlap; for example, letters may have colors. In Eliza's case, they move and rearrange themselves so that she can spell words. Intuition plays a big role, whether it can be laid to the Kabbala, as here, or to some sixth sense.The writer's style is lovely, her use of metaphor thrilling. I've seen a lot of sentence fragments in fiction lately, though, and they don't work any better here than elsewhere. Goldberg can set a scene with just a scattering of words, like "a small boy in a blue shirt the color of deodorized toilet water," or "the day (of a bar mitzvah) is a Tootsie Pop he must try to lick without giving in to the urge to bite through its chocolate center."

[awesomeness1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book was an odd little novel, one I was not expecting. This is about Eliza Naumann, a normal girl who family has resigned themselves to her ordinariness. This all changes when Eliza surprisingly wins her school spelling bee, opening doors to herself that she never even knew existed. Eliza's family is strongly impacted by this sudden change. Her father, Saul, is a Jewish scholar, and is determined that his daughter use her abilities to the best advantage possible, resorting to the old leather tomes in his study for guidance. Her brother, Aaron, is thrown off by this sudden change of his father's affection, exploring any way to be closer to God. Her mother, Miriam, is not what she appears, and this sudden change in the family dynamic brings her secrets to light. All this happens because of one girl's ability to spell. This book has a whole lot shoved in it. Jewish mysticism, Hare Krishnas, kleptomania, obsessive compulsion, complicated families, and spelling bees. It really is like nothing I've ever read before. It was more complex than I was expecting, and I read it slowly in order to soak it all in. The characters and all their actions wer well-developed and intricate. I just really enjoyed the journey it took me on. And, as an added bounes, my vocabulary has been hereby expanded. I can see how it's not for everyone, and I don't exactly recommend it. This is a book people have to stumble on for themselves. My only complaint was the ending, which I felt was a little unclear.

[woodsathome · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I first read this book a few weeks after I read the Secret Life of Bees. Be advised we are talking about spelling bees here not honeybees. I found the relationship story (father/daughter) to be utterly charming. I related to the pressure to be the best academically. The Jewish Mysticism part baffled me, I think it detracted strongly from the story.I don't mind magical realism as a literary device, but here it felt seriously out of place.

[chicjohn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good story well written

[guiltlessreader · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sad, sensitively told story of a Jewish family - each member looking for meaning in life in their own way. Saul, the father, in his Jewish texts; Miriam, a lawyer; and Aaron, who seeks God, outside of his Jewish roots.

At the center of the story is Eliza, a young girl and the only "ordinary" person in the family, who eventually surprises her whole "gifted" family by winning the school-wide spelling bee.

But things aren't as perfect as they seem. As Eliza gets caught up in her success, things seems to unravel in the family.

[nancystebbins · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

At the center of the book is the relationship between father (Saul) and daughter (Eliza). Eliza, who had previously been passed over for gifted classes, is suddenly a spelling prodigy. The father's interest in her awakens and he puts all his energy into tutoring her. The dynamics of this family changes. Eliza's brother (until now, Saul's favorite) set of on a spiritual journey. The mother's secret obsession leads her into riskier situations. Although I've described it in melodramatic terms, the novel is beautifully written and understated. (And I thought the movie, unlike many novel-based movies, stood up well to the book.)

[irishwasherwoman · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Nine year-old Eliza Naumann is somewhat of an afterthought in her family. Her father is a well-respected Hebrew scholar, her mother a lawyer. Her older brother, Aaron, shows promise of becoming a rabbi. When Eliza begins to win spelling bees at the local and regional levels, her fortunes change. Her father directs his attention to her, leaving her mother and her brother to exist in their own worlds. Saul believes that Eliza is capable of reaching the highest level of spirituality possible. His wife, Miriam, has a secret life which leads to a family crisis. Aaron questions his faith and seeks spiritual alternatives. The characterizations of each family member contributes to a compelling read. The author gives a wonderful performance, using a perfect voice for each character.

[robinamelia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A compelling story featuring a pre-adolescent female protagonist. Due to scenes of a graphic sexual nature between the parents, this is an adult book, despite the age of the protagonist. The novel parallels the mystical quests of Miriam, the wife, Aaron, the son, and Eliza, the daughter of Saul, a cantor and house husband. Miriam's quest is fulfilled by kleptomania, Aaron pursue chanting Hare Krishna and Eliza, the spelling prodigy, is introduced to the mystical teachings of Kabbalist Abulfafia. The permutations of letters, which he teaches leads to mystical awareness, is very like Miriam's stealing of odd items and turning them into a secret, kaleidescopic sculpture and Aaron's chanting with the japa beads. Is the author suggesting that these pursuits are really alike? If so, are they all just forms of escape and self-stimulation? It seems they may well all be.

[the_awesome_opossum · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Bee Season is the story of four members of a family all seeking to find their religious, or pseudo-religious, ecstasy. Saul is a devout Jew and auto-didact, who holes himself in his study to pore over his books. His wife Miriam is a perfectionist lawyer harboring a secret habit of kleptomania. Their son Aaron finds himself drawn to the Hare Krishnas, and their daughter Eliza would just like to be good at something for once. She finds her first outlet in spelling bees, but with her father's help it progresses into the search for the secret name of God through permutations of the Torah. Because, if she figures it out, it would be just like having a "red phone" to God, who could then fix her family from the mess it is slowly becomingThis was a very sweet book with a lot of heart and thought behind the characters. It's very similar to Little Miss Sunshine (for its aspects of competition and family dynamics), and the added level of religious longing make it very poignant; I found myself wanting to experience the zeal of a new convert that Aaron has, or the tenacious sincerity of Eliza. Very good book, with a heartfelt narrative that touches on a lot of issues

[apartmentcarpet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second Myla Goldberg book I have read. They both have the same problem - there is an excellent story, with excellent characters, but the plot is never finished. Perhaps there is a deeper meaning in these books that I am missing, but I think Ms. Goldberg is too new and too young a writer to get away with pretensions like that. It feels as though she made such a complicated mess of the plot - a son in religious crisis, a daughter in religious ecstasy, a wife in a mental institution, and a husband and father in despair - that she couldn't find a graceful way to untangle the threads, and so just left them in a knot. I would have given this five stars had the author bothered to write the missing last third of the book.

[stouthearted_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This story about how a Philadelphia suburban dysfunctional family's individual search for God consumes them around the time the youngest member's previously dormant talents start to shine and make her a spelling bee star.The champion speller is Eliza, who was previously categorized as unremarkable and was an unspoken embarrassment by her more illustrious family members. When she starts winning spelling bees, her father, Saul, finally takes notice of her and she replaces his eldest son with his time and concentration. Saul gave up the swinging bachelor life for the idealized life of a Jewish scholar, getting married to attain a quiet study and a life partner that would help him concentrate and learn how to speak to God. The best he could do was attain the position of cantor, but in Eliza he sees the potential to speak to God through the way she has a kinship with the alphabet. Previously, his son Aaron, who was a wunderkind with Hebrew prayers and wanted to be a rabbi, was supposed to lead Saul to God. However, Aaron is ignored by Saul until he realizes that the divide between them is too wide, and it is too late.When time with his father is cut off and discouraged, Aaron looks for God elsewhere than his father's study. He tries out different religions until one fits and changes his whole way of life to the point he can no longer comfortably live at home.Meanwhile, his mother Miriam, who always had OCD-like tendencies to scrub and clean into the wee hours searches for God through perfection, or the word she prefers: "Perfectimundo." Yet her quest for perfection is hardly harmless as she is driven to steal from stores and houses in her quest to find the one object that will make her perfect. This obsession since childhood sends her down a spiral of lies and shatters her family. The family's failure to communicate with one another is their downfall: They are so obsessed with their own personal journeys to find God, that they are strangers to one another. Their ways of trying to reach God is oftentimes fierce, and Goldberg shines in the surreal descriptions of their hallucinations. It is easy to get caught up in the Naumanns' lives, as very personal things are revealed about them so that even in their most dysfunctional moments, we feel for them. Saul is less sympathetic because his obliviousness has made his children social outcasts, but when it all comes crashing down upon him, Goldberg can make us feel his desperation and sudden realization of his action's consequences. This is a great character study, but can be disturbing at times. Things like Miriam's decent into madness and Saul's treatment of his least-favored child of the moment can make you want to shake these people. Other scenes overwhelm , like Eliza's mystical spelling hallucinations as they get more and more intense. An interesting book on the whole, but I don't know if I would read it again, as it is emotionally draining. I think those interested in Jewish mysticism would enjoy this best.

[sirroger · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The thing that impressed me the most was Goldberg's ability to flawlessly recreate the aching, stumbling way that families try, and often fail, to communicate. Beautiful. Endlessly enjoyable.

[shifrack00 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For the most part well written, I just didn't really enjoy. Family story, some plot elements were awkward and I felt uncomfortable with them as a religious Jew.