It should not be so hard to write both poetry and fiction. Both arts, after all, make use of the same materials, words and punctuation. Poems...
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So much is made in other reviews of this book of the family that seeks perfection only to fall further and further from it, but I think the story isn't so much about perfection as it is about just plain seeking.
I didn't see the Naumann family as at all "eccentric," as described in Publisher's Weekly review above. They are a family like any family, with communication trouble, secrets, and compulsions. What difference does it make if a compulsion brings you into strangers' homes to collect an item that is calling to you, or wash your hands a million times a day, or simply buy just one more book when you already have so many at home that you will never in one lifetime read them. Compulsion is the "irresistible impulse to perform an irrational act," and I think it is the eccentrics who don't have that impulse. Those of us who recognize it, and perhaps change it, are perhaps luckier than those whose compulsions bring them terrible harm, but that is another story.
This story is just a wonderful read that puts you inside your own kaleidoscope. It's amazingly dizzying.
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Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
Bonnie Jeanne, May 19, 2007
So much is made in other reviews of this book of the family that seeks perfection only to fall further and further from it, but I think the story isn't so much about perfection as it is about just plain seeking.I didn't see the Naumann family as at all "eccentric," as described in Publisher's Weekly review above. They are a family like any family, with communication trouble, secrets, and compulsions. What difference does it make if a compulsion brings you into strangers' homes to collect an item that is calling to you, or wash your hands a million times a day, or simply buy just one more book when you already have so many at home that you will never in one lifetime read them. Compulsion is the "irresistible impulse to perform an irrational act," and I think it is the eccentrics who don't have that impulse. Those of us who recognize it, and perhaps change it, are perhaps luckier than those whose compulsions bring them terrible harm, but that is another story.
This story is just a wonderful read that puts you inside your own kaleidoscope. It's amazingly dizzying.
(2 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)