Word: goldberg
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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...
...Goldberg's narrative, written entirely in the present tense, shifts smoothly back and forth among the four main characters, tracing the adventures of each one over the year or so covered in the novel. This technique emphasizes the essential isolation of each family member, how a genteel unwillingness to cause scenes or make hurtful comments has atrophied into an inability to say anything truthful at all. Miriam is simply baffled by her children; Saul's parental love is directed more at what they can become than at the needy young people they happen to be. Although she craves victories, Eliza...
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...
...Angeles Gehry absorbed the catch-as-catch-can charm of the built environment of Southern California. After getting an architecture degree at the University of Southern California, he studied for a while at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Not long after, Gehry also changed his name from Goldberg. "In Canada when I was a kid, I remember going to restaurants with my father that had signs up saying NO JEWS ALLOWED. I used to get beaten up for killing Christ. My ex-wife said to me, 'You don't really wanna put your kids through this...
According to Drudge's copy of the manuscript, Clinton's inquisitors included "at least six gays." Literary agent Lucianne Goldberg was branded a "fag hag," Ken Starr "effeminate," and the love life of political pundit Anne Coulter was also delved into. "I was never outing anybody," counters Connolly. He says a disgruntled former assistant added the salacious material to the manuscript before leaking...