Well-researched and well-written, this novel just doesn't grip as well as it should. It falls flat in many places - particularly why Eliza is drawn so much to spelling in the first place. It's atypical of a girl her age. Goldberg doesn't explore this.

The ending leaves much to be desired, too. Not everything needs to be wrapped up, but at least something does.

Amusing at times, but had an overall inconsistent, disjointed feel. The parents came across as superficial but at least Eliza, the protagonist, was likeable.

I loved this book. I did not see the movie but the book has GOT to be better. It is not just about the girl Eliza but also her mother, father and brother in this strangely disfunctional family. They are Jewish but probably could have been any religion and you don't have to be Jewish to enjoy the book. I'm going to recommend it to my book club because the characters and plot are so well developed and the writing is exquisite.

A sad, lovely and generous novel, gripping portrait of a family.
A great read.

Eliza is an average girl. When a spelling bee threatens to reaffirm her mediocrity, Eliza amazes everyone: she wins.
Bee season evokes a child's desperate longing for praise and acceptance and is a masterful portrayal of modern family life.

An underachiever, Eliza Naumann, lives in the shadows of her seemingly workaholic lawyer mom, and a father who focuses all of his energy on Eliza's brother who has rabbinical ambition. She amazes everyone when she wins the spelling bee, and this victory sets off a series of events that throws the already dysfunctional Naumann family into crisis. It is Eliza, through her newfound abilities and confidence, who tries to hold them all together. An intriguing story that holds on to you well after you've completed reading it.

A facinating study of a family of four, each trying to find the piece of themselves not provided by their lives, their family relationships, or their religion. With Zmrzlina, I'm not sure eccentric is the term I'd use to describe them. Incredibly needy, perhaps. Untethered.

The heroine, Eliza, is a particularly engaging girl; the mother, conspicuous by her absence in the early story lines, achingly mad. The father Saul, who turned years ago from a background of hallucinagenic seeking, nevertheless tries for a God-invoked nirvana. And the brother Aaron becomes increasingly disengaged from the family as Saul turns from him to heap time, pride, love and expectations on Eliza.

A very worthwhile book, expecially for a first work.

An interesting read that brings words and letters to life. A unique glimpse into the private lives and selves of a functioning disfunctional family. Learned a lot from this book.

Hard to put down. Seems like it would be a simple story of a Jewish girl who wins spelling bees, but it's so much more. A story of a family that wants to connect with each other but can't get past each individual's unique problems to do so.

It has been a few years since reading this, though I vividly recall recommending it to EVERYONE at the small bookstore I worked at when The Bee Season was released. Mysticism, beautiful scenes...loved it!

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I love the Jewish mysticism that threads throughout the book.

Great book. I didn't know what to expect - but it turned out that I couldn't put it down. Very good play on inter-family relationships and dysfunctional families. The end surprised me very much. A very good read.

Very interesting read. I liked it.

I did not know what to expect fromthis book but I found it fascinating. I could not put the book down and have passed it along to my mom and a co-worker who also liked. it.

Beautiful and heartbreaking. I could barely finish it because the story is so painful.

An eccentric family falls apart at the seams in an absorbing debut that finds congruencies between the elementary school spelling-bee circuit, Jewish mysticism, Eastern religious cults and compulsive behavior. Nine-year-old Eliza Naumann feels like the dullest resident of a house full of intellectuals--her older brother, Aaron, is an overachiever; her mother, Miriam, is a lawyer; and her father, Saul, is a self-taught scholar and a cantor at the community synagogue. She surprises herself and the rest of the Naumanns when she discovers a rare aptitude for spelling, winning her school and district bees with a surreal surge of mystical insight, in which letters seem to take on a life of their own. Saul shifts his focus from Aaron to Eliza, devoting his afternoons to their practice sessions, while neglected Aaron joins the Hare Krishnas. Seduced by his own inner longings, Saul sees in Eliza the potential to fulfill the teachings of the Kabbalah scholar Abulafia, who taught that enlightenment could be reached through strategic alignments of letters and words. Eliza takes to this new discipline with a desperate, single-minded focus. At the same time, her brilliant but removed mother succumbs to a longtime secret vice and begins a descent into madness. Goldberg's insights into religious devotion, guilt, love, obsessive personalities and family dynamics ring true, and her use of spelling-as-metaphor makes a clever trope in a novel populated by literate scholars and voracious readers... --Publishers Weekly

A quirky and lovable tale of a girl, a family, and a spelling bee.

A brilliant book about how nothing is ever the way it seems and more proof that no one can ever truly know another person.

Absolutely fabulous- I loved it!

A fun read! Explores family relationships in a unique way.

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