Word: bee
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...missed the cut back in the second grade that exalted the TAG (talented and gifted) children and left Eliza and her fellow mediocrities to plod along as best they could. So when her teacher asks Eliza's group to stand up and take part in their first spelling bee, the little girl fully expects to sit down again very quickly. Instead, she wins the competition in her class and then her school. Next come triumphs at the district and area levels, and Eliza qualifies for the national finals in Washington...
This unlikely progression forms the central plot of Myla Goldberg's Bee Season (Doubleday; 275 pages; $22.95), a winningly eccentric and intriguing first novel. Eliza's discovery of her talent at spelling may sound like the stuff of human-interest news items, but Goldberg is up to something more demanding here than simply warming readers' hearts. She portrays not only Eliza's happy successes but the unexpected, upsetting effects they have on the other three members of her family...
Some of the events that unfold in Bee Season, notably Miriam's worsening episodes of kleptomania, seem a little contrived. But Goldberg engenders considerable suspense around both Eliza's string of spelling successes and the fates of the other Naumanns. And her descriptions of Eliza's strange linguistic mastery--"The letters are magnets, her brain a refrigerator door"--are humorous and, in a way that Eliza's father would appreciate and understand, mystical...
...inconsistent, her central purpose was captivating. She was asserting the right of female rappers to be as rough and randy as their male counterparts. And while Kim's lyrics offered up her body for male sexual gratification, they came with a threat: she was, she rapped, "Queen Bee." There might be many men in her hive, but she was ultimately in control...
...Bee: Secretive all-female club that meets weekly to talk ballet, opera, Chenl and Ungaro over tea and lace cookies...