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A review by xeyra1
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
4.0
When I was reading this novel and attempted to start another book, I had to put that one down because I could not possibly read it without frowning at how lackluster the writing was... This had nothing to do with that particular second book but with Bee Season itself and the way its author's writing flows. Goldberg's writing is beautiful, poetic, evokative, masterfully weaving the story of a disjuncted, disfuntional family, each with their particular dreams, hopes, fears, secrets and characteristics.
At first one might be trhown by the use of first person present tense, but as you keep on reading, you realize the novel could not have been written any other way. The richness of its writing makes this one of the most enjoyable books I've had the pleasure of reading this year. This does not make it perfect, though. I fell in love with this novel when I first started it, but somewhere along the middle, the focus of the novel changes somewhat and becomes no longer a story about a family that's falling apart at the seams and their inability to do something about it, but a spiritual journey: Aaron's, the eldest son, and his attempt to childishly, I may say, go against his father's religion and his fears of telling him of his decision about his new way of life; and Saul's and Eliza's, in their search for Kabbalistic enlightnment... Instead of having this family and Eliza's new spelling talent as the focus, it changes into a well-worded but sometimes confusing and belwildering religious dissertation. Maybe that's why I couldn't rate this higher...
Despite this, it's a novel that I found impossible to put down, and I ended up enjoying the new focus of the novel, wanting to know what choices the characters made, how they might end up "fixing" their family life, and how would the conflicts that arose be settled. Bee Season is a masterfully-told story about the unraveling of a family which was clinging together by the barest of threads and I must say I really liked it.
At first one might be trhown by the use of first person present tense, but as you keep on reading, you realize the novel could not have been written any other way. The richness of its writing makes this one of the most enjoyable books I've had the pleasure of reading this year. This does not make it perfect, though. I fell in love with this novel when I first started it, but somewhere along the middle, the focus of the novel changes somewhat and becomes no longer a story about a family that's falling apart at the seams and their inability to do something about it, but a spiritual journey: Aaron's, the eldest son, and his attempt to childishly, I may say, go against his father's religion and his fears of telling him of his decision about his new way of life; and Saul's and Eliza's, in their search for Kabbalistic enlightnment... Instead of having this family and Eliza's new spelling talent as the focus, it changes into a well-worded but sometimes confusing and belwildering religious dissertation. Maybe that's why I couldn't rate this higher...
Despite this, it's a novel that I found impossible to put down, and I ended up enjoying the new focus of the novel, wanting to know what choices the characters made, how they might end up "fixing" their family life, and how would the conflicts that arose be settled. Bee Season is a masterfully-told story about the unraveling of a family which was clinging together by the barest of threads and I must say I really liked it.