Bee Season - Softcover

His daughter flowers under his care, eventually coming to look at life "in alphabetical terms". "Consonants are the camels of language", she realises, "proudly carrying their lingual loads". Vowels, however, are a different species, the fish that flash and glisten in the watery depths. Vowels are elastic and inconstant, fickle and unfaithful... Before the bee, Eliza had been a consonant, slow and unsurprising. With her bee success, she has entered vowelhood.

When Saul sees the state of transcendence that she effortlessly achieves in competition, he encourages his daughter to explore the mystical states that have eluded him--the influx of God-knowledge (shefa) described by the Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia. Although Saul has little idea what he has set in motion, "even the sound of Abulafia's name sets off music in her head. A-bu-la-fi-a. It's magic, the open sesame that unblocked the path to her father and then to language itself".

Meanwhile, stunned by his father's defection, Aaron begins a troubling religious quest. Eliza's brainy, compulsive mother is also unmoored by her success. The reader is left wondering what would have happened if the Naumanns' spiritual thirsts had not been set in restless motion. A poignant and exceptionally well crafted tale, Bee Season has a slow beginning but a tour-de-force conclusion. --Regina Marler

'A natural storyteller, Goldberg writes with a confidence that eclipses the fact that this is her debut novel. Deceptively simple prose cushions sparkling metaphors and pushes the plot towards its devastating, yet beautiful, climax.' The Times

'A totally beguiling debut novel...Goldberg's prose is witty and quirkily observant. ‘Elle Magazine

'Excellent...strikingly different.' Observer

'Truly original.' Red