The Bee Sting

This is the story of a family who falls apart in the aftermath of Ireland's 2008 economic crisis. The Barnes's are among the wealthiest families in a small town in the middle of Ireland, owning and running a car dealership there. When the crash comes, it seems for awhile like they can sail through, and then it seems like they might sail through with a little belt-tightening. And then it seems the sailing days are over.

Murry begins this story with Cass, who plans to attend university in Dublin and live with her best friend. When the financial pressures become evident, so does the disparity in the relationship with her best friend. Cut adrift, Cass has trouble concentrating on her exams, and as her normal teenage woes veer into more show more serious terrain, it's clear her parents aren't paying attention. Then there's PJ, a sweet child, who may spend his time playing truly frightening video games, but that hasn't affected his sensitive heart, which notices his parents's troubles and does his part to not bother them, no matter what. He's found an on-line friend who is supportive which his parents definitely don't notice.

Murray's skill as a writer is in full display as, having killed all sympathy for these negligent parents, he proceeds to tell their stories and to force the reader to care about them. Murray writes each character so well, each has a voice of their own and the mother's section was just fantastic -- written in a stream-of-consciousness that reflects who she is. The book opens with long sections for each of the four family members, then moving between them more rapidly as the novel builds to its conclusion. We've all read books that end pages, or even chapters, later than they should have. This is the first time I've encountered a book that deliberately ended too early. I'm not sure what to think of that. show less

Fly Like a Butterfly
“Dust be diamonds, water be wine
Happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time
Dust be diamonds, water be wine
Happy, happy, happy all the time, time, time”
- from the album Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending, Incredible String Band, 1969.
First lines:
”In the next town over a man had killed his family. He had nailed the doors shut so they couldn’t get out. Their neighbors heard them running through the rooms screaming for mercy. When he’d finished he’d turned the gun on himself.”
With over 26 audio reading time hours between the first and last lines, it’s no wonder that many readers thought the song had no ending. But the story does, ambiguous as it may be, like Murray’s characters the reader must show more decide.

It’s a rambling tale of three generations of an Irish family living in a small village, and on the face of it one could be forgiven in thinking it is just another, albeit well-crafted, Irish story that has become almost a genre in its own right.

But that is just what it is not. It’s a story about time, how the past stays with us, how people change or think they do. How we don’t realise in our moment that this is our life. There’s no returning. That’s all folks.

Imelda - the middle generation -
“Time doesn’t do what you think it will, does it? You get your turn, but they don’t tell you that’s all it is. A turn. A moment. Everything explodes, you’re nothing but feelings. Your life begins at last. You think it’ll be all like that. Then the moment passes. The moment passes but you stay in the shape you were then, in the life that’s come out of the things that you did. The remainder of that girl you used to be.”

And Dickie, Imelda’s husband, on trying to recover his past, walking through his old stamping ground of Trinity College in Dublin nearly two decades later.

“There were new buildings everywhere with obtuse designs, deliberate acts of modernity. They struggled against the university’s aura of pastness The plush heaviness like a brocade of pure time that covered everything and held it in suspension.”

Against the tales of the individual characters hangs the beginnings and forebodings of climate change and ecological damage. The piece of plastic blowing in the wind, semi attached to a power pole, that once held a memorial photo of Imelda’s first love, brother of Dickie. Frank whose ghostly presence lingers on. That plastic will, Imelda muses, outlast all our lives, all our “turns”.

Bad things seem to happen with weather changes, storms, flash flooding. But the characters literally plough through downpours and flooded roads. In sync with their doom. A come-what-may-ness. There’s an “All the world’s a stage” vibe about The Bee Sting.

A gem of a book. Read it for the prose alone. As for the characters, I came away almost in love with one of them, the boy, PJ. And I guess I’m not alone.

Read this book. show less

How did it come to this? You look back at the past and you can't tell where exactly you went wrong. Was it a single misstep?"

This is the story of the Barnes family, Mom and Dad Imelda and Dickie, and their two children, 17 year old Cass and 12 year old P.J. It begins in a leisurely fashion, with long sections narrated from the pov of each of the four family members, beginning with Cass. She is self-absorbed, yet at the same time uncertain of her way in life. She can't wait to leave home for college and get away from her parents. She is vaguely aware that her parents are having financial difficulties, but views this only in the context of how it affects her social status and whether or not she will still be able to move to Dublin for show more college.

I found P.J.'s section to be heartbreaking. He absorbs the fact of his parents' financial difficulties and takes the responsibility onto his own shoulders. For example he doesn't tell his mom that he has outgrown his shoes to the point that he is walking around with bloodied and blistered feet. P.J. also thinks he's found a sympathetic online friend who if anyone had been paying attention to him might have been outed as a pedophile. Then we get to Imelda's and Dickie's sections, and things get really interesting.

About two-thirds of this book is taken up by these initial long four sections. The method of alternating pov sections among these four characters continues, but in much shorter and much faster-moving sections as incredible tension is built up as the book moves toward its conclusion. As the tension is building to the crisis point, I found myself reading breathlessly, trying not to skim, but desperate to know what will become of this family I've come to care for. As the story is drawing to an end, all four are in a dark forest, and I think in less skilled hands I would have felt that the author had manipulated the characters/plot (and the reader) to achieve this. Instead, the author has brought his characters (and we the readers) to this point seamlessly and naturally'

A lot of people did not like the ending. We are at a point of incredible tension. Something awful seems about to happen. Things could go either way, will the awful thing happen?---and then it ends, and we have no explicit answer. This ambiguity actually worked for me. I know how I would hope it ended, but I think it probably ended the other way.

One Amazon reviewer said this book reminds her of why she loves books, and I agree. And even though the book is fairly long, it feels short. Highly Recommended.

5 stars show less

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray is a character-driven account of the many ways seemingly normal families can spin out of control and often back into sync with each other.

I'll acknowledge upfront that this won't appeal to every reader (though this statement is true of every novel) for some specific reasons. One is the length, some readers simply don't want to read something this long. I know people who squeeze perhaps 30-60 minutes of reading in on most days, which can make maintaining engagement with a long story more difficult. There will also be those readers who don't care for the multiple viewpoints expressed in ways unique to each character. They may want one voice throughout the book or don't really like getting into the heads of show more characters they wouldn't like in real life. So if these comments refer to your preferences, you might want to skip this book.

If you're even remotely interested in a novel like what I've described, you will be richly rewarded with this one. While the problems, some self-generated, these characters face are unique to them, they are also analogous to what most of us face. So we both follow this family and, if we read actively, reflect on some of our own life experiences. That alone makes this a successful novel for me. And this element, of the characters being similar to all of us, comes to a head in the final section when the voice changes to make them more directly us.

I would hope this doesn't need to be emphasized to most readers, but a novel, of any genre, requires the characters to make decisions or act in ways we think we would never do. That means you're not going to agree with a lot of what they do, or you'll feel the need to judge them from some (false) superior position. Don't! Empathize with them, try to understand how things could evolve to make someone make those choices. Step outside of your safe little bubble of faux superiority and care about someone, albeit fictional, different from yourself.

I would highly recommend this to readers who like to read about family, and by extension societal, dynamics from within the heads of those involved. The writing is excellent and if you allow yourself, you'll care about each character even if you're also glad they aren't in your life.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via Goodreads. show less

I have been longing for a book like this my entire adult life. I'm not entirely sure how to put into words how incredibly attached I have become to these characters, how moved I am by their experiences and actions, and how devastated I am to have to now part with them. Paul Murray's writing is exceptionally complex while still maintaining a level of accessibility that forces you to care about the story he meticulously builds over the course of 700 pages. I understand that certain readers may find this book slow moving, uninteresting, or difficult to dedicate time to. The Bee Sting does not offer you automatic comfort nor does it make it easy for readers to immediately relate to or even care about its characters. This is a book about the show more imperfections of being human, the things we do to each other, the things we do to ourselves, and the things we do to be loved. Murray writes these characters in a way that is realistic, empathetic, and nuanced without being gimmicky or relying too much on shock factor. I really can't express enough how beautiful and heartbreaking this book is. I know this response will not be universal, but every part of this book worked for me. There are so many moving parts, so many excessive details and little bits and pieces of the story that may feel irrelevant but it truly feels as if you are living the lives of these characters alongside with them. If you are someone who enjoys character driven stories and wants something challenging with and incredible build up and pay off, I can not recommend The Bee Sting enough. show less

The Bee Sting is a wonderful novel that has certainly earned its place on the 2023 Booker Shortlist.

The 650 pages flew past for me. The Barnes family is composed of four people, husband Dickie, his wife Imelda, daughter Cass, and twelve year old younger brother PJ. Dickie has taken over his father's car dealership and finds himself in financial trouble. His wife Imelda, is the town beauty. Cass is struggling with teen angst and is soon to be off to Dublin to university, if the family can afford it. Meanwhile young PJ finds himself threatened by the town bully, and rather than tell his cash strapped parents that his shoes are too small, he continues to wear them even as his feet bleed. Gradually we learn the back story's of each of the show more main characters. Imelda grew up in poverty, with an abusive father. Dickie has secrets from his past, which he fears will be revealed.

The characters are richly and empathically drawn, despite their many foibles. My only quibble is with the rather ambiguous ending.

Highly recommended. show less

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under―but rather than face the music, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way through her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away show more from home.

Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favor to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil―can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written―is there still time to find a happy ending?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: This book is A Lot. Long, deep, densely packed.

I enjoy reading anything that plays in the quantum fields of many worlds. The idea of one.little.change. making all the difference in one's life is very empowering, as well as nonsense, and honestly hazardous. All of those are reasons we love to mess with it safely in our fiction. Here Paul Murray goes full-tilt boogie down this waterslide, wets us to the bone in the spume of his landing, and completely destroys our hairdos.

Is it good anyway? Well...honestly...yes, but in a curious way no. Want to laugh hollowly at the folly of the merely mortal? Come hither, disciple dearest. Want to process your grief at the titanic (or Titanic) sinking of the life you planned? This is your altar call. Or is the appeal of a stonking novel immersive and redemptive reading? Hie thee hence, pilgrim. Nothing for you here...there is no redemption here, no one's gettin' what they think they deserve before the Apocalypse that's looming calypses. Need rigorous copyediting with Oxford commas, periods, line breaks, and other such embankments to channel the flow of the words? Ite, missa est. No communion cookies for you, though madeleines will be served in the Sodality of Marcel's post-tea.

Digressive is my word for this seemingly Irish specialty of novels (Milkman's another favorite) that don't give a feck for your English rules. Me, I'm down with it, I like things that don't slavishly straiten their gates to some Authority's pre- and proscriptions just cuz. Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of the culture wars! Whatever you do, don't be boring!

That said...well, honestly I found the central thesis of the family tedious and predictable: Dad's crushed, Mom's hogtied and struggling, Junior's got his antennae out so far they can find meaning in electric currents imperceptible to an ammeter, Sis is in thrall to the Mother of All Crushes on the most dreary poseur in all of literature...really, does this need retelling? The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit, To the Lighthouse, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and every Colleen Hoover book ever written fill these separate niches extremely ably...have for most of a century. (It felt like a century passed when I read 102pp of It Ends With Us. *shudder* I {mildly mis-}quote that nasty little creep Truman Capote: "That's not writing, that's typing.")

So my bag was mixed. I loved parts, liked most of it, and was impatiently awaiting liftoff that never quite generated enough thrust to get me over the literary Kármán line. Hence my stingy-feeling 3.5 stars. It might be stingy but it's waaay better than most stuff I read and toss aside. I'm really impressed with Author Murray's swinging for the fences in all his writing and storytelling. I mean, mad respect for going toe-to-toe with the twentieth century's greats (and megabestselling hack Hoover)! But coming for the monarch isn't safe lest you fail to slay them.

No slaying here, though some serious wounds were delivered. show less