Title
READ // Bee Season : A Novel
Recommended Title
Bee Season : A Novel
By Myla Goldberg
New York : Anchor Books, c2001
PS3557.O35819B44 2001
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From Professor John Mitchell:
The ability to write good fiction has always been a marvelous mystery to me. How can someone believably create other minds, other worlds? I have still no inkling; but the author of Bee Season took me on an unforgettable ride through the workings of an extraordinary mind. Here is a family – far more dysfunctional than yours or mine, each member in his or her own way seeking mystical perfection – and at the center of it all is a fabulous young heroine whose astounding ability to spell nearly breaks the family apart, and whose decency and wisdom ultimately makes familial salvation possible. But this ability to spell is not that of someone who never misses a word on a spelling test. It exists on a dimension that, but for the book, we could never imagine; for in the author’s exquisite description of her mental processes, we of plodding, earnest minds for a moment are given a glimpse of what pure genius looks like.
From the Publisher:
Myla Goldberg's keen eye for detail brings Eliza's journey to three-dimensional life. As she rises from classroom obscurity to the blinding lights and outsized expectations of the National Bee, Eliza's small pains and large joys are finely wrought and deeply felt. … Not merely a coming-of-age story, Goldberg's first novel delicately examines the unraveling fabric of one family. The outcome of this tale is as startling and unconventional as her prose, which wields its metaphors sharply and rings with maturity. The work of a lyrical and gifted storyteller, Bee Season marks the arrival of an extraordinarily talented new writer.
"Bee Season is a profound delight, an amazement, a beauty, and is, I hope, a book of the longest of seasons." —Jane Hamilton, author of A Map of the World and The Book of Ruth
About the Author:
Known particularly for her lyrical and creative writing style, Myla Goldberg’s short stories have appeared in many journals and anthologies including Harper’s, Ploughshares, and the Translantic Review. She was awarded the 2001 Edward Lewis Wallant Award and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize for her writing. Her book, Bee Season, was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2000 and made into a film. She is the author of Time’s Magpie: a Walk in Prague, Rosalind: a Family Romance and Whistling and Other Stories. Her most recent novel, Wickett’s Remedy: a Novel, a portrayal of a young Irish-American woman’s triumphant struggles during the Great Flu epidemic of 1918, was published in 2005. Myla Goldberg teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College in New York.