Early on, “Bee Season” is largely about our young heroine’s ascent to the National Bee. Goldberg writes about the spelling-bee subculture in great, reportorial detail, and about Eliza’s newfound relationship with her father in a crushingly poignant way. But this is by no means a modest book, either in scope or intellect. “Bee Season”–which just topped the monthly Book Sense poll, meaning it’s a book that independent booksellers are dying to sell, sell, sell–evolves into the story of an epically fractured family. Eliza’s supernatural gift for spelling thrills her father, Saul, a self-styled Jewish scholar who now believes he can train his daughter to literally talk to God. Unfortunately, that means shunting aside Eliza’s older brother, Aaron, who joins a religious cult, and her scarily remote mother, Miriam, who begins breaking into houses in search of missing pieces of herself.
Heavy stuff? Imagine a Jewish “Ordinary People” and then some. No one in “Bee Season” is as captivating as Eliza, and the novel sags when author Goldberg starts giving everybody equal air time. (The idea of an entire family enmeshed in radically different spiritual pursuits–simultaneously–seems a bit forced, in any case.) But the book’s final sections are unexpectedly powerful. Best of all, Eliza returns to center stage, which is exactly where she–and Goldberg–belong.
Bee SeasonMyla Goldbert (Doubleday) 275 pages. $22.95
