Home :: Books :: Audiocassettes  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes

Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Bee Season

Bee Season

List Price: $29.99
Your Price: $20.99
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 .. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 .. 25 >>

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Don't Bother
Review: I kept seeing it in the stores--but was sorry when I had to read it for a book group.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Against the backdrop of the national spelling bee, a family searches for transcendence and, in the process, unravels. It's a creative, inventive story line. The characters are finely drawn and come to life over the course of the book. The pace slowed a little in the middle, but picked up to an exciting conclusion in the end. If not for the slowed pace in the middle, I would have rated it five stars.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Something like chess
Review: The strength of the story was how it showed relationship dynamics. The weakness was in the characterization. She has a great command of language, but it did not bring me into new realizations about people or life. The way she allowed the plot to unfold reminds me of how I play chess. I start out setting up the perfect game, but once I have all my players in position, I am at a loss as to what to do next because I do not want to ruin its perfection.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Wonderful--But Obviously Not For Everyone
Review: I found Bee Season to be a wonderful, entrancing novel--part coming of age novel, part disfunctional family novel, and part something all its own. It should be obvious to readers of the reviews on these pages, though, that this novel is not for everyone and it's not for everyone because of that part of it that is something all its own. Eliza Naumann is a shy, unremarkable girl, treated as nothing special even by her own family. It isn't until she wins the area spelling bee and is off to the nationals that she finally gets some attention from her cerebral father. Her mother is another story, another plot line. From the moment Miriam, Eliza's mother, is introduced, there is something simply not right with her one of Goldberg's threads in this novel explores what's inside Miriam's head. We also meet Eliza's brother Aaron, who, because Eliza has displaced him from the child of honor in the household, goes off on a spiritual quest of his own. Things are not what they seem in this novel, there is much brewing in this seemingly simple suburban family. Saul, the father sees Eliza's spelling talent as a sign of her inner mysticism, but he focuses so on her, that the other members of his family, who sorely, sorely need him are neglected to the point of breakdown. There are no easy resolutions to their problems and the novel does not end with loose ends tied up neatly, the problems continue. The mysticism element of the novel may strike some as odd. Perhaps these factors are why many have disliked the novel. If you feel up to it, though, read this novel. Bee Season is a marvelous novel written by a talented young writer. Myla Goldberg's writing is beautiful, her characters are real. Yes, the story does take some interesting twists, nothing predictable, but still nothing that comes "out of the blue." Enjoy

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Bee Season
Review: Filled with mysticism and obsession.... Tragic End!
At first, I really like it. I think Ms. Goldberg is very witty and talented. However, the story is not realistic at all. It takes all extrimist into 1 family. Each of the character present their own interest and selfishness to reach their own personal goal and describe a family without any bonding to one another. It is more like a house with a few people live in it without any emotion and interaction. Ms. Goldberg certainly is creative to make something simple to be a very complicated experience. From practicing spelling to a world of religion and mysticsm. The way it describes, it just captures the work of mind in an obsessive person in the border line to insanity. Each person has his/her own obsession and till the end ... none of the obsession bring any worthiness. I am very eager to read to the end, but I am really disappointed how the book ended. I am still not sure the message of the book to the reader.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: not worth the read
Review: Simply, I must state that kchelle, along with cozyiniowa hit the nail on the head. Enough said.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: starts out fine...then gets weird
Review: I was thoroughly excited and entranced by Bee Season the moment I started reading. I loved the idea of the girl as an underdog in a family of overachievers, who finally comes to find her own talent. It rings true to the lives of many pre-adolescent girls-and being set in the 80's, Eliza reminded me of myself in this time period.
But then....(and i'm not going to spoil the ending) the book takes a turn and i completely felt like I was dredging through mud to get to end. It was as if the writer had 2 story ideas in mind and tried to paste them together. What began as a quiet, meditative tale based around characters and their emotions turned into a soap opera of mental illness and religious fanaticism (and believe me, these plot points really do come out of nowhere as the book turns into a different story after the first spelling bee) What was believable and endearing about the characters, turned into something completely far-fetched and overdramatic. They became caricatures and the details of the family I found interesting at the beginning of the story became totally unbelievable and sort of creepy at the end. I the end I was glad it was over, but also left confused and dissapointed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Life, God, The Universe, and Spelling Bees
Review: I love when a novel literally knocks the wind out of you, and Bee Season by Myla Goldberg certainly does that. When you get to the end of the last page, and realize you haven't taken a breath since three pages back. You just sit there, staring at the book, saying, "Wow."
Bee Season starts out innocently enough. The story of one misfit young girl who unexpectedly wins her school's spelling bee and inadvertently changes the lives of her misfit brother and their mildly eccentric parents. But as the book sucks you in, more layers are added. Each character searching for enlightenment and spiritualism, or anything to fill their empty lives and souls, in some very interesting places.
More interesting is the ways in which some of these family members actually find a way to make peace with the universe, and in the process manage to blur the lines between sanity and craziness, and between what is or is not acceptable or expected.
There are no absolute answers in Bee Season, but there are some mighty fine questions.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Good craftsmanship but unbelievable plot
Review: Ms. Goldberg is a talented writer-- she knows her craft and can hone poetic, interesting prose. However, the plot of this book was too unbelievable to be taken seriously. Every character was an exaggerated version of a real person. Dysfunctional families are much more subtle than the Naumann family. The relationship between brother and sister is the only one that rings at all true. I actually prefer to think of the relationship between Saul and Eliza as unbelievable because if a relationship like that does exist, it is totally exploitive, amd not in the least supportive. (I think Ms. Goldberg wants us to see it as a combination of the two.) I found elements of it quite creepy-- Saul's preparation of Eliza for the experience of transcendence is absolutely inappropriate, considering her age, and the way he teases her with "what's ahead" made me want to charge him with mental abuse of a child. I was so disappointed because I was eager to be fascinated and charmed by the work of an intelligent young Jewish woman. Ms. Golberg clearly has first rate writing "chops". She just needs to think a bit more psychologically and not so sensationally.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Bee Season Review
Review: Bee Season is about a girl who is at once not at the top of her intellectual senses. As soon as she wins the state wide spelling bee people start to judge her as a brainiac. Her teachers start to treat her as a studios student instead of the once lazy type she had been. Her father Saul, once blinded by her future, seems to judge his daughter and he works to make strive excellence in the classroom. While they are off studying, her mother is seeing that she has no relationship with her daughter. Aaoron starts to seek religion in the Kuhua. This book reflects that if you do good in one area one time you are judged totally different. The books starts slow, but has a good ending.


<< 1 .. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 .. 25 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates