Book Review: Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

To be fair, I will admit that when I picked this book out, I thought it was about social-insect-bees and not spelling-bees. So reading the back of it when it arrived in the library caused some disappointment. I hate no idea where I got the title of this book from. All in all, I would say I enjoyed it. It’s about a dysfunctional Jewish family (I only mention that they’re Jewish because it’s extremely relevant to the story) whose underachieving daughter suddenly discovers at a school spelling bee that she can spell. I found the book to be somewhat strangely written in that the beginning focuses primarily on Eliza and her feelings and how her family relates to her…you know that her mother’s obsessive and neurotic, her father’s very spiritual and spends time bonding with his son who shows potential (for what, we don’t find out until later) and her brother who used to be her best friend but has hit that age. Then towards the middle there’s so much going on with her family that although the spelling’s still there, it seems like it’s more in the background. I found the characters interesting – I thought they were going to be somewhat one dimensional but was pleasantly surprised…the felt a little like characters from a Douglas Coupland book transplanted into a different story. It’s definitely not a “read over and over again” book but it was interesting. The ending was a little disappointing in that it wraps up Eliza’s story and not so much the others but I guess it came full circle in that way.