Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

In Bee Season by Myla Goldberg, eleven-year-old Eliza Naumann shocks her intellectually gifted family—and herself—when she advances to the national spelling bee, revealing hidden depth in a seemingly ordinary girl. 

Surrounded by brilliance—her father Saul, a scholar of Jewish mysticism and synagogue cantor; her mother Miriam, a high-powered lawyer with obsessive-compulsive tendencies and kleptomaniac complications; and her brother Aaron, a precocious Hebrew reader who distances himself through spiritual experimentation—Eliza’s emergence unsettles their precarious order. 

As Eliza’s success draws in Saul, he begins to tutor her not just in spelling, but in kabbalistic teachings—believing her talent may channel divine insight. This spiritual fervor reveals deeper fissures: Miriam’s obsessive behaviors escalate, Aaron rebels through religious searching, and the family facade begins to unravel. 

Goldberg writes with a deft combination of lyricism and precision. Critics praised the novel—Paul Gray of Time called it “a winningly eccentric and intriguing first novel,” and The New York Times appreciated its intellectual honesty and emotional depth. 

This emotionally resonant narrative peels back the layers of idealism and expectation, capturing the fierce poetic power of language and the fragility of family bonds. Bee Season by Myla Goldberg is a compelling meditation on faith, identity, and the silent stirrings of genius in unexpected places.