Sometimes when a person I've just met or a well-meaning family member talks about my future children, I stop to correct them. "Oh, no, I don't want kids," I say, laughing breezily to lighten this very personal revelation. This answer garners one of two responses, neither of which are very polite. Either my conversation partner will look at me with eyes of wisdom and upraised chin and say, "You're young, you'll change your mind," or they'll screech "WHAT???!!! Yes. You do!" But I don't want kids and probably never will, and it's not a shoot from the hip folly of youth sort of idea but a decision I've given a lot of thought to. My family history is a potpourri of unpleasant genes that I would hate to pass on to another human being. The world is overpopulated enough as it is. Plus I am almost certain that I would be the Ayelet Waldman mother who resents her kids at least half of the time for taking energy and focus away from her relationship with her husband. Above all, I have never had that "maternal instinct." It's just not there. In my early teens I was sometimes forced to babysit for my younger cousins with my sister. I would lay on the couch and read and dole out snacks, counting the minutes until my aunt and uncle came home, while my sister picked up the kids and played and changed their diapers and talked so easily in those baby voices that I refused (and still do refuse) to use. Kids can be cute, but I don't want to spend too much time with them. Some of us are meant to be parents. Some of us are not. And I think it's better for those of us who are not to recognize that before we screw up the next generation. Bee Season is an entire book about what happens when two people who shouldn't have kids go ahead and have kids. Predictably, the kids are treated as appendages, unconsciously encouraged to compete with each other for their parents' favor (which isn't even favor so much as just attention) while their parents try to make themselves whole. The Naumann household is something of a worst case scenario. But it should be required reading for those You Really Want Children, Yes You Do! people.Goldberg's depiction of the brother/sister relationship between the Naumann kids, Eliza and Aaron, is perfect. Before they got to the age where they realized they were in competition to be the smartest, most worthy child, they were a team, scheming to get the best pieces of cake in the synagogue. It's heartbreaking (but true) when Aaron starts to ignore Eliza and can't even look at her face over dinner, once she starts winning her spelling bees and winning over their father where their father was previously Aaron's alone. That's exactly what happens in a family where love is based on merit. Resentment for that parent is only a speck of a seed, to bloom sometime in the future when the child is old enough for hindsight. I also liked Aaron's religious wanderings as a rebellion to his father's Judaism, once his dad stops paying attention to him. There is some interpersonal reason for everything that happens in this book, but the reasoning is never too annoyingly obvious. Goldberg is a smart writer that way. Bee Season is very well done. But I can't say I loved reading it, because the Naumanns are so much like a real, recognizable family that it's uncomfortable. Who loves reading about parents who shouldn't be parents parenting? I don't. But I do love reading about kids overcoming the issues born of their parents who shouldn't have been parents, and there is enough of that here to make the reading worthwhile. It's more like 3.5 stars.
This book is unique in the sense that it addresses a common storyline (coming-of-age while under intense academic pressure) in a quite uncommon manner. While guising as a simple plot involving a girl's quest to win a spelling bee, this book explores topics all the way from mental illness to religious awakenings. The heart of the story, though, rests in a young girl's observations of and interactions with her family. An omnisceint narrator threads the plot together, as s/he explains the inner-most thoughts of each individual family member through short vinettes. This format works well for the plot and what the book seemingly is attempting to do, yet overall I think the narrative as a whole falls just short of revealing its own intended truth.The major downfall of the book is also its key strength: it is painfully honest. I often got a sense that sometimes the narrator was TOO omniscient, telling me things about the characters that I didn't want to know. I often felt embarrassed for them and ashamed of their thoughts. While this of course speaks to the strength of the author's perception in observing human behavior, I was left wondering WHY the author wanted us to know these things about her characters. Are we supposed to reflect on our own attitudes about our family members and ourselves? Should our knowledge of their thoughts conjure our sympathies or malice towards one/all of them? Or was it meant to be purely a writing exercise, in which the author attempted to explore her flexibility in writing different characters? Whatever the answer, I feel that I would have had a much more gratifying reading experience had I understood the point of being made to feel like an incestuous peeping tom. Narratively, I feel that the book does not quite complete what it started, although in all fairness, the height of ambition is quite admirable. Nor does it encourage the reader to "complete" the story on his or her own. This loose plot ending, combined with both the narrator's penetrating eye and sensitive subject matter (involving the conflation of religion, sexual acts, mental illness, and family jealousy), left me with an overall eeriness upon finishing the book. While sometimes the sense of being "haunted" by a book is a delight to the reader, I would not place this in the same category. Yet while I shudder when I recall this story, it is a shudder due to the emotionally piercing honesty of its voice, one that seeks to speak truth even at the cost of human humiliation. And for that, Bee Season wins both my merit and my cautious recommendation.
What do You think about Bee Season (2001)?
What seemed at first to be an average book about a dysfunctional family revealed itself halfway through to have a beautiful depth. It explores the paths people take to find serenity and to get closer to a god of their understanding. These paths are marked by obsession, rebellion and mental illness.The warehouse kaleidoscope scene is wonderfully described and it reminded me of the scene in the movie American Beauty where Ricky Fitts was describing his discovery of the secret life of objects when he watched a plastic bag dance in the wind: "That's the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever."
—Dysphasiatic Gremlin Grrl
I enjoyed the parts of this book where I was learning about religions that I knew nothing about. That was real fun to not only learn What happens, but the Why and especially the How those doing religions feel about it during.I dug all the stuff about the daughter going through the Spelling Bee. That was an interesting journey. In fact I was okay with all four of the characters being, sort of, awful people when I thought things would get better. And things did get better by the end, but not as much as I would have liked.While the majority of the time the sections followed one of the character's personal perspective there were occasional scenes with multiple characters. Goldberg was able to go from one character's thoughts to another's so well. Just super ease of transition.There were never any slow parts in the book, but I don't think the subject matter thrilled me as much as I would have liked.What if after she learned how to spell she got superpowers? Spelling Superpowers!That's not this book, but it's a good book.
—Russell
Eliza, an average fifth-grader, wins her school spelling bee, to her and every else’s surprise. As she goes on to more serious spelling competitions, her family members begin to question their own choices. Her 16-year-old brother considers converting from Judaism to another religion; her insomniac mother begins making strange trips to other neighborhoods; and her academic father reveals what’s really in all the books in his library. Eliza herself tries to figure out what she wants out of spelling and where she fits in her family.I hated the narration. A lot. It was third-person omniscient, in present tense throughout, despite the fact that it moves in time. (“ Kaitlin read this book last week, and is thinking, ‘Huh, why does cousin Ali make me read this book?’ Now next Tuesday I am having a snack and thinking about seeing Despicable Me 2 last weekend. I am sitting in the top row, watching the minions…’)I loved Miriam, the unstable mother, who was the only fully formed and understandable character, despite her mental illness. I found the brother’s story implausible and thought his mind worked more like a child’s. The father was OK but pointless.I wish this book had been written from the mother’s perspective and touched on every member of the family, but without going into the details of their childhoods. With each character given equal weight, the story became overwrought with each character’s version of “but what does it all mean?” resulting in no cogent story at all. And, seriously, who questions his life because his kid sister can spell ‘neighbor’?I would give this book 2.5 stars, though I dislike it more now that I've read my own review :-)
—Kaitlin
