Bee Season: A Novel: Amazon.de: Myla Goldberg: Englische Bücher

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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 nine-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. Eliza's father, Saul, a scholar and cantor, had long since given up expecting sparks of brilliance on her part but once she wins the state-wide bee, he begins tutoring her for the national competition, devoting to Eliza the hours he once spent with her brother Aaron.

His daughter flowers under his care, eventually coming to look at life "in alphabetical terms". "Consonants are the camels of language", she realises, "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 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 -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

Amazon.com

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 -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verf�gbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

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Incredible, wrenching, fascinating, and subtle 17. Juli 2000

Von Molly Felder

Format:Gebundene Ausgabe

How wonderfully Myla Goldberg's novel resonates with the reader! Eliza's rocky path to self-realization also illuminates the lives of those closest to her: her father, Saul; her mother, Miriam, and her quietly affecting older brother, Aaron, whose dissatisfaction with Judaism leads him to turn to Eastern religion like a ship pushing toward light on a dark sea.

For its careful unfolding of immensely complex ideas, its playful love of language, and its serious scholarship, Bee Seasons finds deserved company among Diane Ackerman's treatise, A Natural History of the Senses. These kinships are all the more remarkable because Goldberg weaves them so seamlessly throughout a work of fiction. The pages disappear as easily as snowflakes on the tongue, but the motivations behind Eliza's determination, Saul's thirst for knowledge, Miriam's elborate secrecy, and Aaron's desperation will indeed leave you feeling that you have "eaten a large meal" by the end.

Despite how much this novel offers in the way of learning, the most searing aspects are the vastly different relationships within Eliza's family, all of which deepen and complicate along with her initiation into the realm of higher-level spelling bees. She blossoms under constant tutelage, finding a once-unachievable place within her cerebral father's affections. Eliza's ultimate, life-defining choice, propelled by both the rewards and consequences of her gift, reflects an understanding of the tenous certainties that come with familal love. She must sense what Saul once thinks at the sight of her onstage, about to spell a word he's sure she has wrong: "Quick. Open your eyes. This is what I look like when I still believe in you."

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A Spellbinding Tale of Spelling 15. Juli 2000

Von David Lister

What we have here is the Story of Eliza Naumann and her family. Eliza has two very smart parents and a very smart older brother. Unfortunately, Eliza doesn't seem to have inherited her family's brains--she seems stuck in the shallow end of the gene pool. At school she has been put in the classes with the slow learners and she seems happily resigned to her scholastic shortcomings.

The father is a cantor at temple and is grooming Eliza's older brother to become a rabbi. The mother, a lawyer, seems to have a slightly unhealthy obsession with order. Suddenly, against all odds, it is discovered that Eliza has a talent that exceeds all expectations. Eliza can spell. She can spell virtually anything.

Bee Season is the chronicle of how this unexpected gift causes irrevocable change to each and evey member of Eliza's family, and how, to a certain extent, her gift is mirrored in the particular behavior and patterns of her parents' existence, as well as in the behavior of her brother.

Myla Goldberg has written a fantastic first novel, full of insight and compassion for the family she has created and burdened with so much. I look forward to Ms. Goldberg's future efforts and recommend Bee Season to everyone--it is a truly entertaining read, with much serious stuff bubbling around beneath the surface. What a great book!

Intense and agonizing in many ways. 10. Juli 2000

Von Monica K. Van Ness

The story of a family slowly falling apart, each person too caught up in the intensity of what they are feeling and trying to find for themselves to be able to really help or comfort each other. And it seems as if Eliza loses something so joyful. Her joy in words and letters becomes so caught up in what her father thinks that she should be trying to do with her talent, those words and letters no longer speak to her. Beautifully written story that draws you into the lives of the characters.