NOVEL THOUGHTS
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DOUBLEDAY, 2000
(available in paperback from Anchor, 2001)
BEE SEASON is the painful tale of a father, mother, and two children, each searching for meaning and acceptance as their family unravels.
The family’s descent into chaos is precipitated by nine-year-old Eliza Naumann’s discovery of a hidden talent, an aptitude for spelling. Eliza is an indifferent student, placed by her teachers in a class for slow learners. Unexpectedly, she wins the school and district spelling bees, and for the first time, teachers and classmates pay attention to her. More important, Eliza’s father, Saul, looks anew at the child he thought had little promise.
Saul, a rabbinical scholar and cantor at the local synagogue, had pinned his vicarious academic dreams on his son, Aaron, an overachiever who seemed destined for the rabbinate. When Eliza’s talent for spelling reveals itself, Saul shifts his attention from Aaron to Eliza. He encourages her to explore the teachings of the ancient Kabbalah scholar Abulafia, preparing her to receive shefa, or God-knowledge. Eliza’s single-minded focus on the discipline borders on the desperate; she hopes her spelling can hold her family together.
While busy with Eliza, Saul fails to notice that his withdrawal from Aaron has left his son angry and hurt. Aaron turns to the Hare Krishnas for the meaning and acceptance that elude him at home. Eliza’s mother, Miriam, a brilliant lawyer who fails to connect with her husband and children, finds herself descending deeper into the dark abyss of mental illness.
As each character in Bee Season searches for personal and spiritual fulfillment, the family spirals into sad and lonely chaos.
Aaron’s choices about food mark the first visible sign that he is breaking away from his family to join another. As a Hare Krishna initiate, Aaron must become a vegetarian. While his sister and parents grab pieces of barbecued chicken at a family dinner, Aaron piles his plate with macaroni and cheese, announcing to all that he is a vegetarian because “it just made sense.” However, “he wishes he could describe the delicious meals he’s had at the temple, the intensity of the flavors making a convincing case for the food being suffused with Krishna’s spirit.”
The smells and flavors of foods prepared at the temple seem to draw Aaron deeper into a feeling of acceptance, of being “home.” The first breakfast at a weekend temple retreat disappoints Aaron—he feels homesick for Frosted Flakes with bananas, and remembers the way his father magically sliced a banana within its peel with a needle and thread. But later, watching his mentor, Chali, cook prasadam, a food whose preparation and consumption is considered integral to devotional service to Krishna, Aaron is drawn toward the temple and away from his father: “Aaron closes his eyes to better appreciate the smell, a mix of spices that has never graced his father’s pots, a scent full of promise.”
The final act of culinary alienation comes when Aaron makes a vegetarian meal for Saul and Eliza. Since religious guidelines forbid Aaron to prepare prasadam outside of his own shrine, he cooks other vegetarian foods—chickpeas in ghee, zucchini, and rice—as substitutions. His cooking produces crunchy chickpeas that are barely edible. When Saul asks Aaron if he sampled them while cooking, Aaron explodes: “You’re not supposed to taste them. Okay? There are rules. You don’t know anything so how am I supposed to talk to you? Don’t eat it if you don’t like it. Go back to your meat. I’m going to eat in my room.” He carries his plate of burned rice and limp zucchini upstairs. The rift between father and son grows ever wider.
In their early years, Eliza and Aaron spent their Friday evenings attending services at Temple Beth Amicha. As is the custom in many American synagogues, worshippers filter into a community hall after services for an oneg—a light meal—and conversation.
Temple Beth Amicha’s oneg features watered-down juice and dry cookies, “chalky shortbreads that crumble into little pieces unless the whole thing is ingested at once.” In spite of the food’s questionable quality, the event has magical appeal for Aaron and Eliza, who practice strategic placement in order to snag a prime wafer cookie, or, on a birthday, a piece of cake with a flower on it.
We have included a recipe for a much-improved shortbread cookie, slightly crumbly and full of chocolate chips. We suggest strategic placement by the cookie plate to get one before they disappear.
Preheat oven to 325°F.
Cream the butter and granulated sugar. Add the vanilla and eggs and mix until combined. Stir in the flour, oats, and chocolate chips and mix well. Chill the dough for easier handling.
Roll a teaspoon of dough in your hands and shape into a crescent about 3 inches from tip to tip. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Repeat, placing cookies 1 inch apart, until the sheet is full, then bake for 15–20 minutes until just slightly browned.
Put confectioners’ sugar in a bowl and roll crescents in sugar while they’re still warm.
Yield: About 50 cookies
NOVEL THOUGHTS
The Borders Books and Music Best Sellers Book Club of Waipahu, Hawaii, has been described as a United Nations of book lovers, with members of Hawaiian, Chinese, Spanish, Irish, French, Polish, Lithuanian, Greek, Portuguese, and Scandinavian descent.
In their discussion of Bee Season, the Best Sellers focused on the harsh treatment that Eliza experienced at the hands of her father. “We felt that the rigors he put her through were tantamount to child abuse,” Lillian M. Jeskey-Lubag says. They also speculated about the inspiration for Goldberg’s book. The group later learned that a television documentary about children in spelling bees had inspired the writing of Bee Season.
Boston Area Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Book Group members Bill Varnell and Mary Knasas brought alphabet cookies from Trader Joe’s for their group’s discussion of Bee Season. “I thought our group of articulate people would have a serious discussion of the book,” says member Elizabeth Lang, “but we can also be wildly funny. We spelled out a few words, and then ate our words. But I think it was the potential of spelling out words that drew us in and fit so well with the book.”
