The Bee Sting

by Paul Murray

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 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?

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Literary Fiction, Contemporary, Irish Literature, Novels, Family

656 pages, Hardcover

First published June 8, 2023

About the author

Paul Murray is an Irish novelist. He studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin and has written two novels: An Evening of Long Goodbyes (shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize in 2003, and nominated for the Kerry Irish Fiction Award) and Skippy Dies (longlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize and the 2010 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic fiction).

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

1) After the horrible misstep of The Mark and the Void I am so happy to report that Paul Murray is BACK. Skippy Dies is one of my all time favourite novels and I knew it couldn’t be a one-off, and here is the proof.

2) Paul Murray has a rare, exquisite gift for writing about kids and the way they think and talk without looking like your dad in a nightclub. Poor PJ (aged 12) – we agonise along with him so much as he overthinks and applies way too much logic to his life. And he is like a tiny but just as annoying Bill Bryson - did you know that the human body contains two litres of non-human bacteria? No, me neither. Thanks PJ.

3) The Victorians had an excuse for writing freaking long novels, there was nothing else to do but read back then, it was either novels or catch smallpox or polish something or clean a mountain of shoes. They couldn’t even phone each other back then! But these days when I am frequently told TikTok and Instagram have destroyed modern attention spans and no one can concentrate for more than 23 seconds authors constantly deliver unto us enormous beasts like this one, 646 pages, what happened Hamish Hamilton, did all your editors die? This novel is more than somewhat too long.

4 ) It’s Flashback City. Paul Murray concocts some very excruciating situations for his colourful cast of characters - say for example a Big Decision – your character will be streaming their consciousness as they drive in their car (a lot of driving) towards the Big Decision and they will be forever flashbacking to the various bits of the story that led up to this moment (which we have already been through once). And this finally started to get on my nerves, I have to admit. Stop blathering about The Past all the time! I was heard to howl. Just get on with it! Please! This once! In fact one character berates another for doing just that, but actually, they all do it. And do they ever get on with doing the thing we've been waiting for them to do for the last 100 pages? Nope, this lot, they are the wild procrastinators, they never get on with it, never reveal feelings, never admit stuff, never leave, never explain except in their own minds where they explain and mull and ruminate about that thing that happened and that wedding day or that car crash. It wears you down.

5) I hate these fucking places, Caleb says. Everyone’s so self-congratulatory. Acting like they’re Che Guevara because they’re wearing their mam’s earrings? He looks round at the crowd and scowls. I bet you a million euro that when they’re not here performing their category, ninety percent of these people work for some tech firm that runs on tax evasion and Chinese labour camps.

Modern novels that are set in contemporary times have this perpetual tendency to turn into bitter black-humored sociological commentary – it seems to be inescapable. Bret Easton Ellis and Edward St Aubyn do it all the time, and it’s all over such novels as The Slap, The Ask, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Animals, Dietland and a trillion that I haven’t read.

6) This book is full of things that don’t happen. And it makes you think that your own life is also full of things that didn’t happen. Some of which we should be very glad about.

7) Two favourite quotes :

She’d opened the door and found him there and got a shock – though really it was more the shape of a shock, without the feeling, like the postman bringing you a letter with nothing inside it.

The girls are scrolling through a dating app and saying stuff like OMG that is literally the most terrifying man I’ve ever seen. "Have my own business with van” – great, perfect for disposing of your body

Then :

That’s a nice dog though. I would actually date that dog.
Me too, they should have an app for available dogs.

8) If it wasn’t for all the flashbacking which makes your neck ache, being yanked this way and that way, and the one hundred pages too many, this is a 4.5 star novel.

[Ron Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two decades ago, the Irish writer Paul Murray started his career by publishing “An Evening of Long Goodbyes,” a book that has remained one of this century’s greatest comedies. With this month’s publication of “The Bee Sting,” Murray has written a book that could remain one of its greatest novels.

He was hardly sitting still between these two triumphs. In 2010, “Skippy Dies” was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 2016, “The Mark and the Void” was joint winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, a British award for comic literature.

Admittedly, even that record of success might not be enough to draw American readers to Murray’s new 650-page epic, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize on Aug. 1. But anyone who starts “The Bee Sting” will be immediately absorbed by this extraordinary story about the derailing of a once prosperous family. Although Murray is a fantastically witty writer, his empathy with these characters is so deep that he can convey the comedy of their foibles without the condescending bitterness of satire. His command of their lives is so detailed that he can strip away every pretense and lie without spoiling a surprise. And, most impressive, while sinking into the peculiar flaws of this one uniquely troubled family, Murray captures the anxiety many of us feel living on the edge of economic ruin in these latter days of the Anthropocene Epoch.

In the small Irish town where “The Bee Sting” unfolds, Dickie and Imelda Barnes are a prominent couple. Dickie runs a car dealership owned by his retired father, and his wife, Imelda, is a legendary beauty. But as the novel opens, the pretty facade of their lives has started to. . . .

To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/...

[Adina (Back from the slopes and trying to catch up]

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

Gave up the audiobook after 4h38m out of 26h10m.

Too long to battle through a book I do not particularly enjoy. Ok, I am not a fan of family drama in general although I can appreciate some of them. The Bee Sting is definetly well written but failed to grab me and the size does not help. The novel is the story of an Irish family of 4 who sinks together with the family business.

[Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Winner of the Irish Book of The Year Award
Shortlisted for the 2024 Folio Prize.
Shortlisted for the inaugural Nero Book Awards Fiction category as I predicted
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
#11 in my Booker Prize longlist rankings after reading all the longlist books twice.

My Instagram post on what worked for me, what did not, my favourite quote and of course a book-themed Golden Retriever photo here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CxKYpvygp...

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize - I originally read this around two weeks ahead of the longlist announcement as it has been included in some Booker speculation - of the nearly 80 eligible books I pre-read I ranked this below 60th.

Having said that, and after re-reading it, I do think it’s a very possible winner -it’s certainly an early Bookstagram favourite - and in terms of the popularity of the prize a far from unreasonable winner. It strikes me, of all the longlist books, as the one readers might most readily press into someone else’s hand and say “you must read this” … although that was really the historic criteria of the Costa Prize for which I think this would have been a better fit, and this may well be a strong contender for the inaugural Nero Prize.

On literary merit though - I don’t think it’s Finest Fiction, which should be the Booker criteria.

On a second read I found the Imelda section a little disappointing. It really did not I think fully capture her supposed scattergun non-sequitur filled way of talking that Cass describes. And it is definitely where the book gains in size (it’s a very lengthy section) what it loses in focus. For all the exhaustive dissection of Imelda’s life - most of it supposedly occurring in flashback around the time of a Lion’s Dinner honouring Maurice which takes place in the same venue as her wedding to Dickie, many of the key elements of that day are withheld until a later section.

I did appreciate though the way in which Mike appeals to Imelda via a shared experience of extreme childhood poverty, and the Cass/Elaine dynamics remain strong.

And the folktale of the man who parties with the fairies only to find on returning to the world that 100 years have past and all he loved - one I slightly struggled with first time as it applied to character’s individual lives - worked best second time for me when I interpreted it as a metaphor for the Celtic Tiger years in Ireland and for Western consumerism/late capitalism and climate change (the latter subject which is also cleverly linked to the Magdalene Laundries).

But it’s the ending that still does not work for me, when viewed through a literary/finest fiction lens. Not the final scenes (although that is rather too clunkily signposted from the first line of the book) but the pages leading up to it where there are too many coincidences (just a couple of examples but Cass while in Dublin attends a talk by Willie where he talks - unknown to her - about her father, and a few pages later is unknowingly next to Ethan in a shop), too many last minute interventions and far too many of the characters converging in the last pages including some long thought lost.

We need to take off our masks …. And that's hard, after a lifetime of hiding away, it's existentially hard, take it from me. But once you do it, the world is transformed. Once you take off your mask, it's like all the other masks become transparent, and you can see that beneath our individual quirks and weirdnesses, we're he same. We are the same in being different, in feeling bad about being different. Or to put it another way, we are all different expressions of the same vulnerability and need. That's what binds us together. And once we recognize it, once we see ourselves as a community of difference, the differences themselves no longer define us. That's when we can start to work together and things can change.

ORIGINAL JULY 2023 REVIEW

A more than 600+ page family tale switching over a year (albeit with frequent flashbacks) or so between the viewpoints of four members of a nuclear Irish family, for whom the Irish financial crash had uncovered buried tensions and secrets of the past, and one which takes place against the emerging threat of climate change.

Initially I found this an engrossing read, the author’s ability to cleverly capture the four different voices and the way in which we gained insight and different perspective over time impressive; the repeated imagery and stories intriguing; but the book took for me an unwelcome turn, rather overstayed its welcome (the amount of plot did not at justify in my view the book’s length which seemed more a product of lack of editing) and had an ending which was stylistically clever but for me ill-judged in a narrative sense.

The family are father Dickie, his wife Imelda, his daughter Cass and son PJ.

Dickie runs the family motor dealer business set up by his father Maurice (now semi-retired in Portugal). Dickie had a younger brother Frank, a renowned GAA participant (particularly at Gaelic football) who died when Dickie was at Trinity – we also learn that Frank was initially engaged to the Imelda – beautiful but from a poor background - and the sequence of events which lead to her then marrying Dickie shortly after (already pregnant with Cass) and Dickie then ending up back in the family business, as well as the ghost of other lives that may have occurred for both of them, lies heavily on their lives and across the novel.

It has to be said that the idea of choices made – and the imagining of alternative future pathways becomes a little too common as the book goes on.

At the start of the book – the business is failing badly in the second-third year of the economic downturn, Dickie seems powerless to run it around and Imelda (something of a consumerholic) despairs at having to start selling everything she has accumulated over the years. All this is seen through the voice of Cass – one of the brightest girls at her school and coming up to the Leavers Certificate she expects to win her a place at Dublin, but increasingly obsessed with Elaine – the beautiful but capricious daughter of the other local businessman Big Mike a cattle dealer turned property developer.

We then change voice to PJ – who spends much of his time online chatting to a friend Ethan on a Game Board, his school days avoiding bullies – particularly one who claims Dickie owes his family money and that he will badly beat up PJ if he does not get the money - and the rest of his time worrying about his family situation – wearing too small shoes as he does not think they can afford new ones and oddly obsessed that his parents will get divorced and/or send him to boarding school.

In both sections Murray’s ability to capture the voices and inhabit the character of a older teenage girl and a rather nerdy 12 year old boy is impressive – and there is a light undercurrent of humour despite the travails of the family and the personal anguish of the two children.

Next up is Imelda, desperate for Dickie to ask Maurice for help. We learn via flashbacks much of her early life (in a desperately poor family with a violent ex bare knuckle fighter father - her only real ally her youngest brother Lar) and how she met Frank – whose sporting prowess charmed her father just as his poverty and violence rather repelled Maurice. This is in many ways a powerful section, and written in a rather breathless as well as unpunctuated style meant to capture both Imelda’s lack of formal education and her rather scattergun style of speaking/thinking. A number of media reviews have referred to this as a stream-of-consciousness style and invoked Molly Bloom but I think that is misleading and not intended by the author.

The fourth voice is Dickie – and while the move to a rather conventional voice matches Dickie’s much remarked upon bookishness. I did not really feel the storyline worked – telling of Dickie’s move to Trinity to study, a friendship with an eccentric other student Willie (which becomes much deeper over time), the truth behind a traumatic incident when he was apparently struck by a bus on the first day of his third year (note that the book is rather too full of famous incidents which are not what they seem – the truth about the titular event which meant Imelda wore her veil for the entire wedding to cover her swollen eye emerges later on) and then a, for me, rather surprising relationship he forged when he returned.

A fifth section of the book then adopts a stylistically impressive second person voice - and using it switches rapidly around each character as we learn more of the past and see how the present develops: Cass for example now at Trinity, Imelda deciding what to do about the attentions of Mike, Maurice who has returned from Portugal finding holes in the garage accounts, Dickie freed from the garage spending his time with Victor – an eccentric but driven end time prepper who drags Victor into his plans and helps transform a shed on Dickie’s family land (a shed which has different meanings to various of the novel’s characters).

Other characters include a mysterious Polish mechanic who obsessed a number of the family members, Big Mike’s Brazilian housekeeper and sometime lover, Imelda’s ageing seer Aunt Rose (with who she lived for many years) – and at the end - in a sequence which transitions further to be written more like a play - a series of rather unlikely events (at the least in their simultaneity) and part misunderstandings causes pretty well every character to converge on the shed – in a section which I really felt was not a great way to end a literary fiction novel.

Overall for me - as my initial comments said - a book which despite its considerable merit, just failed to either live up to its huge promise or really justify its length.

[Will Byrnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the next town over, a man had killed his family. He’d nailed the doors shut so they couldn’t get out; the neighbours heard them running through the rooms, screaming for mercy. When he had finished he turned the gun on himself.
Everyone was talking about it – about what kind of man could do such a thing, about the secrets he must have had. Rumours swirled about affairs, addiction, hidden files on his computer.
Elaine just said she was surprised it didn’t happen more often.

--------------------------------------

For months now she has been having the same dream Of a flood that sweeps through the house Carries off clothes from the wardrobes Toys from the cupboards Food from the table In the dream she is trying to stop it She is wading around, pulling things out of the water But there’s too much to hold in her arms and it overcomes her The current grows stronger Pulls away the appliances the kitchen island tiles from the floor paint from the at the edge of the water watching her go Staring down as she’s swept past In their eyes she is old Her youth is gone too It has all been washed away by the water

The Barnes family is having their problems. It is 2014 in small-town Ireland. We follow Dickie, Imelda, his wife, PJ, their son, and Cass, a high school senior, through a range of travails. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina opens with, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Guess which category the Barnes family fits into.

PJ is almost a teen, so will have a lot of growing-up to do, but he is faced already with challenges that are plenty daunting. Coping with bullies at school is no fun, if a particularly usual checklist item in coming-of-age stories. But he is also beset by the thug teen child of one of his father’s customers, who feels his family has been cheated by Dickie. Beatings happen, and more are promised if he does not pay up. And these are the lesser of the challenges he faces. On the upside, he likes spending time hanging out with his father, working on a project in the woods behind their house.


Paul Murray - image from the Hindustan Times - shot by Lee Pelligrini

Cass has teen-angst aplenty, coping with her social status, her newly-ripening sexuality and her attraction to a promiscuous friend. She is trying to define who she is. (which is not exactly a wonderful person when we meet her.) A part of that is seeing herself as separate from her family. She would definitely not want to be associated with those people. She is particularly hostile to her father, blaming him for the demise of the family business, and the collateral social impact that is having on her. She is not a stunner like her mother, which does not help. The prospect of heading off to college in Dublin offers a concrete escape route, the sooner the better. She is besties, I guess, with Elaine, who is as amoral and unfeeling as she is beautiful.

Imelda came from a working-class family. Rough around the edges would be a kind description. But she was born a knockout. It was always going to be her ticket out. She falls in love with the town’s football superstar, Frank. They are to be wed. Frank stands to inherit a successful family business, and should be able to provide nicely for her. Problem is a literal crash and burn, and buh-bye Frank. She winds up marrying Frank’s older, smarter, but not-golden-boyish brother, Dickie.

Dickie had the brains for college, and attended, for a few years, until an unfortunate event derailed his collegiate career and he headed home. He may have been the smarter of the brothers, but Frank had the gift of salesmanship, and was a better fit to take over the car dealership. But when Frank dies, it falls to Dickie to step in. He manages, but it is not work he exactly loves.

These days, he is spending time in the woods behind their home, building a defense against Armageddon, spurred on by a troll-like employee who exhales conspiracy theories and seems to be looking forward to the coming end-times. He has a lot of time on his hands. The car-dealership is in the crapper. Along with plenty of other businesses, suffering not only from a global economic downturn, but massive flooding in the town. Dickie’s father, Maurice, retired, but still the owner, swoops in to try to fix things, blaming Dickie for the difficulties. Dickie is not entirely faultless here. But there are serious complications with him.

We follow these four for over six hundred pages, getting to know them intimately. We learn their secrets, see them change, see them cope with relentless stressors, see them grow, or not. This is the greatest power of the novel. Each is faced with decisions, moral choices, that define their character, that define their changes, maybe their failures. If that were all, it would be an outstanding piece of work, but Murray offers a very rich palette of content as well, raising it to another level.

There are many notions that run throughout The Bee Sting’s considerable girth. Space has been reserved to handle them all. The core, of course, is family. Not exactly the most functional, the Barnses. Parents who have been raised to hide their emotions have no natural ability to make a happy home.

You couldn’t protect the people you loved – that was the lesson of history, and it struck him therefore that to love someone meant to be opened up to a radically heightened level of suffering. He said I love you to his wife and it felt like a curse, an invitation to Fate to swerve a fuel truck head-on into her, to send a stray spark shooting from the fireplace to her dressing gown. He saw her screaming, her poor terrified face beneath his, as she writhed in flames on the living-room carpet. And the child too! Though she hadn’t yet been born, she was there too. All night he listened to her scream in his head – he couldn’t sleep from it, he just lay there and sobbed, because he knew he couldn’t protect her, couldn’t protect her enough…

On top of which, secrets abound. They are all trying to find a way out, except for PJ, who is mostly interested in seeing things returned to the way they were before the dealership miseries began, and radiated outward. Murray shows how dysfunction and damage can carry forward from one generation to the next, the brutality of Imelda’s family, the emotional absence of Dickie’s. But all has not been destroyed.

When Dad was fun everything was fun. Not just holidays, not just Christmas. Going to the supermarket! Cutting the grass! At bedtime they had pyjama races, they read Lord of the Rings cover to cover, they put a torch under their chins and told each other ghost stories…

Family connection is important, mostly in the desire of most to sever it. Dickie was desperate as a young man to get away, get an education, do something other than sell cars for the rest of his life. Imelda came from a toxic family (not all of them) and also struggles with her connection to the family she is in, for current-day part of the story. Cass wants out, ASAP. Tethers are cut, but some are also sewn. The tension between these struggles is fuel for the story.

Murray looks at the impact of the environment on peoples’ lives. The story is set at the tail end of the recession from the Celtic Tiger boom that had preceded. The economic environment was still pretty tough and we see how this impacts the family.

It will come as no shock that a major, unusual, flood impacts Dickie’s already sinking business, with talk of liquidation, that a water leak in the Barnes house carries omens, and that Imelda dreams of being washed away, as she is forced to cope with losing the luxury level lifestyle to which she thinks her incredible beauty entitles her. Cass’s collegiate prospects and social standing are endangered. Other players in the story are challenged as well. PJ is fast out-growing all his clothing, but does not want to be a burden on the now-struggling family, so keeps quiet and castigates his feet for growing too much. There is a stream involving the presence of gray squirrels in Ireland. They are an invasive species, as of a century back, and carry a disease that is fatal to the native red squirrels. Are they the only locals in danger of being wiped out?

Another stream is the notion of returning, coming back from the dead, in particular.

Some people might say that the key problem is with coming back from the dead specifically. Because obviously death is a pretty serious step with all kinds of long-term effects that you’re not going to just shake off. But lately you’ve noticed it with other things too, that even though they never actually died, when they came back from where they’d gone they were still completely changed.

Imelda keeps looking for the ghost of Frank to show up at her wedding to Dickie. Dickie is definitely not the same after returning from Dublin. Same for Cass and PJ. Other characters, a maid, a mechanic, a patriarch, return as well, with mixed results.

…is it worth taking the risk? Sometimes? If you could still sort of see the person they were and you thought maybe there was still enough time, if you knew what to do or say?

Bees get a bit of attention, if a bit less than expected. The bee sting of the title is inflicted on Imelda, on her way to her wedding to Dickie. Her face was in no condition to be seen, so every wedding picture of her is through her veil. There is another passage about the mating habits of bees. It does not end well for the males.

…the pesticide the farmers use on plants contains a neuro-toxin that destroys their memory so they forget their way home, can’t make it back to the hive where they live, and that’s why they’re dying out. When they looked in the hives they found them not full of dead bees, but mysteriously empty. Maybe that’s what happened to Cass, you think. Maybe air pollution in the city has damaged her brain and now she’s forgotten her home. Though really you know it started way before she came here.

The impact of stinging on the stinger is also considered.

There is even a bit of magic as Imelda’s Aunt Rose has a particular gift, sees things that others cannot, says sooths, a family thing, but not one that Imelda has ever manifested.

Murray writes in differing styles. Most of the book is presented as third-person omniscient, describing the actions and peering inside to reveal the characters’ thoughts and feelings. Standard stuff. The final section, The Age of Loneliness, is written in the second person. We alternately assume the POV of the main characters, as each races toward the stunning climax. Imelda gets a breathless, minimally formatted structure. There is a sample in the second quote at the top of this review.

I wrote Imelda’s section, and I knew she was on her way to this dinner… I wrote that first line like she, well, she needs to use the bathroom really urgently. And I put commas in and a full stop. And it did not feel right at all. The only way to write it was without the punctuation, and I wanted it to feel like you’re in her head. She doesn’t parse things in the same educated way that Dickie or indeed the kids would do. She just thinks in this much more immediate, intensive way. When you go from the kids’ sections into Imelda’s section, I wanted it to feel like, woah, there’s a change in gear here. Like there’s something’s going on that hasn’t been apparent up until now. At this moment in her life, but maybe at every point in her life, everything feels extremely precarious. She’s on this knife edge, all the time. She always feels like everything’s going to collapse, the floor is going to disappear from under her and she’s going to just tumble down into the past with her abusive dad and the poverty and the grimness and stuff. - from the. Hindustani Times interview

It would not be a Paul Murray novel if you did not come away from the reading without a few more laugh lines in your face. He takes the most liberty with this in the teens’ sections, the most reminiscent of the grand, rude humor of Skippy Dies to be found here. For example

Nature in her eyes was almost as bad as sports. The way it kept growing? The way things, like crops or whatever, would die and then next year they came back? Did no one else get how creepy that was?

or

Behind him, another boy, not as tall but slightly droopier, had started kissing Elaine. It was distracting; it seemed like she could hear it even over the metal, a squelching noise like walking on frogspawn.

or

It feels weird reading a prayer off his phone, where he has looked at so many unreligious things. He hopes the Virgin Mary knows it’s meant for her, that he’s not praying to e.g. Candy Crush or Pornhub.

You get the idea. Love this stuff.

So what’s not to like? Nothing, nothing at all. This is a wonderful, engaging, risk-taking, funny, moving, horrifying, engaging, biting, human triumph of a novel. You may feel stung by elements in this great tale, but you will come away with a literary trove of honey.

Ireland is a place where people are very good at talking. People are so funny and have such brilliant stories, and it’s a way to disguise what you’re actually feeling. The reason, I think, is because this is a place where very terrible things have happened and the way we deal with them is by not addressing them. So I feel like the ghosts are alive and they’re active. The past is affecting what you’re doing in a very real way. And if you don’t address the issues, then the darkness just grows, and the damage gets passed down from one generation to the next, like in the book. – from the Guardian interview

Review posted - 12/8/23

Publication date – 8/15/23

The Bee Sting was short-listed for the Booker Prize


I received an ARE of The Bee Sting from FSG in return for a fair review. Thanks, folks, and thanks to NetGalley for facilitating.



This review will soon be cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Links to Paul Murray pages on Wikipedia and Goodreads

Interviews
-----Hindustani Times - Paul Murray – “Climate change is something I worry about all the time” by Saudamini Jain – READ THIS ONE
----- The Guardian - Paul Murray: ‘I just dumped all my sadness into the book’ by Killian Fox
-----The Booker Prizes - A Q&A with Booker Prize 2023 shortlisted author Paul Murray - video – 4:08

My review of an earlier book by Murray
-----Skippy Dies – one of the best books EVER!

Items of Interest from the author
-----New York Magazine – 3/15/23 - Who is Still Inside the Metaverse?
-----The Guardian - Paul Murray: ‘How the banks got rich off poor people would be a painful read without comedy’ on The Mark and the Void
-----Boston College Libraries – Fall 2022 - How to Write a Novel - video – 1:20:05 - Paul from 7:45 - On the book from 18:25 – well, sort of - Largely about why it took so long between novels – and his experience with screenwriting - Wicked funny, too.
-----Outlook India - Excerpt

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now shortlisted for Booker Prize 2023 - This is my winner. Good luck.

The story of a family whose members are all on the brink of breakdown. I'm not a fan of novels that change the protagonist every 150 pages, but in this case, I found that every new family member managed to be more interesting than the previous one. Despite apparently very little plot, Paul Murray keeps things moving in the right direction. In the end, I knew this is my new favorite from this year's Booker longlist.

[Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize]

Wildly ambitious, perhaps overly long, and full of conceits written in an affectatious tone—this novel surely will not be for every reader.

If you don't like coincidence in the novel, or characters you don't necessarily see eye to eye with, then don't pick this up.

If you're not a fan of stream of consciousness writing or when author's don't use quotations for their characters' dialogue, you might not enjoy this either.

BUT, if you are prepared to go on a crazy ride for 700+ pages (oh yeah, if you don't like chunky books... you get the point), then I can't recommend The Bee Sting enough.

We follow the Barnes family, a once-wealthy Irish quartet who are down on their luck after an economic slump. Dickie, the patriarch, is slowly losing a grip on his car dealership and his sanity. Imelda, his too-gorgeous-for-this-small-town wife is questioning her place in the little world she's created with Dickie. And their two kids, Cass and PJ, are coming into their own, discovering the world's foibles and follies, including those of their own parents.

I loved how much of an adventure this story was. It's not necessarily large in scope, mainly following these four characters over the period of a few months or so in their life. However, the inner lives we explore in each of them is rich and Murray renders their voices and thoughts so vividly on the page. His prose is the kind that you can completely lose yourself in, and it made a 700+ page book hard to put down. Quite a feat.

There's also so much to unpack in this novel thematically. I cannot wait for book club to discuss this because you can look at it in so many ways. A novel about climate change and the state of our world, about discovering your sexuality and identity (and the ways different generations approach this), through marriage and friendships, and so much more.

Like I said, I don't think this will be for every reader. It's definitely giving an Irish Franzen vibe, so if that sounds like your thing, you will likely love it, or at least enjoy the ride.

[David]

DNF. I struggled for several weeks to get traction with this and just couldn't do it. I understand and appreciate what Murray is doing with it, or at least what I think he's doing with it. I read it in part as a subversion of the kinds of novels I dislike, particularly a critique of an overlong family melodrama. But even a subversion of that kind of novel requires the plot and characters to be taken somewhat seriously for the farcical elements to stick. At 600+ pages, I just couldn't face it. In the end, I find myself agreeing with those who like it for what it does, as well as with those who dislike it for all the reasons I couldn't force myself to read it.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’m changing the truth.”

Let me start, though, at the end. And at the end, my fugitive heart flew out of my delicate chest and expanded, inflated, soared on puffy wings and a pagan prayer. The end. I’d rather finish there than spoil it for readers, as every single page bulges with new discoveries and the celebration of the novel form itself.

The story takes place in a berg a few hours from Dublin, and Dickie and Imelda Barnes, once wealthy from the VW sales and garage business (inherited from Dickie’s father), are now struggling due to the financial crash. So, it is probably just a few years after 2008, but not specifically stated.

Dickie and Imelda carry their secrets about like albatrosses. Imelda, in her late thirties, is and was the most beautiful woman in four provinces. As a young teen, she was the poor Cinderella waiting for her prince. She met Frank, Dickie’s younger brother--an athlete, a stunner, a charmer. She fell in love. And once you learn about Imelda’s family, you’ll want her to fall in love, too. But then tragedy strikes. We know this up front, what we don’t know is why Imelda married Dickie after all this. It’s all part of the masquerade and how the past keeps insisting on the present. And the future is already in crisis.

One of its prominent themes is that you can’t dismiss the past, and you can’t take it down. You have to live with it in the present and reckon with it if you want to have a future. There’s a fable that Imelda, the mother/wife character, is reminded of. It is a Brigadoon-esque fable, (but from Irish folklore), where a man sees a door, opens it, enjoys a hedonistic experience, only to find that, when he leaves, it is 100 years later and his family is dead and gone.

The present also kicks up plenty of dirt in this masterpiece. How does Murray do this? The past unwinds, then rewinds, then ferociously unspools, while the present comes thundering in like a flood. “Every moment was the moment when everything changed.”

While the past rears its ugly head as a portentous cataclysm of the here-and-now, I wondered how the future would unfold. Murray is a spry reader’s writer, he’s a fusion artist--of how a postmodern novel can embrace the old form of a narrative and give the reader that sense of extended drama. Murray enfolds the art of the conventional novel and then, simultaneously, sticks a fork in it, blows it up, and then carries on and takes you with him.

This book seemed to contain at least a thousand pages in its 643, yet I digested it as if it were only 100. There’s absolutely no fluff in here, no padding, no extra or waste. Every word needs to be there, each page contains multitudes. It isn’t the headache-inducing density type of text, it isn’t whimsical, either. It’s natural and imaginative in correspondence. Cynicism has no footing here, so the characters and storytelling are generous, irresistible.

BEE STING is full of people at their most desperate, and consequently they leak their hidden desires, needs, and display impulsive conduct. The family is frantic from the endless fallout of the crash, and their fate intersects with the powers of the past. The humanity in this story is compelling, the dialogue, setting, and events grounded in a relatable reality, however wild and furious it gets. Pain and pleasure are mutual, often in concert.

The setting is on a collision course with climate change—drought, flood, belligerent heat, other natural disasters or near-disasters. Imelda is selling off her jewelry on eBay to survive, and Dickie is rapidly declining—emotionally--all the while building a bunker in the woods with his peculiar friend, Victor. The family of four are all slipping gradually through the cracks, like getting buried in an earthquake.

Imelda and Dickie’s teenage daughter, Cass, is hopefully headed for Trinity College in Dublin. She aims to ride on the coattails of her best friend, Elaine. Cass will do anything for Elaine, she’s in her thrall. Cass’ 12-year-old brother, PJ, is a science nerd, a video-game geek, who suffers from adolescent problems to the 10th power, especially as some menacing oaf is putting PJ’s life in danger, demanding money. Oh, and there is an Aunt Rose who is straight out of a fairytale, who can foretell the future.

Each character has their own chapters/sections and are punctuated (or not punctuated at all) to match their thoughts, feelings, and approach to the world. Before you turn away from Imelda’s zero punctuation, know this: Paul Murray’s superb writing gently coaxes you to quickly imbibe his rhythm. You’re willing because it’s organic and authentic. The nature of Imelda’s character and how she thinks and talks seduces you right from the start. It’s like canoeing on accelerated waters---you will place your oars in the water to go with the flow. It’s not hard. It requires you to pay attention, but the sweep and movement of the narrative suck you right in.

BEE STING has girth, it has weight, and the rhythm is musical, lyrical; the story had its hooks in me straight off. And I’ve never been so fascinated with a writer’s ability to pull the past into the center of the present. I keep going back to that point, I know. The stylistic mastery of this author blew me away. The microcosm of this story within the macrocosm of Ireland is finely polished, even when feelings are bitter and raw. I twinned with Murray, as if the words came from my own mouth. It was like me telling this story to me. You don’t need an audio book; this reads like audible language that you can hear, in your ears and in your soul.

This is a brilliant book, my first Paul Murray, and I’ve already ordered the rest of his oeuvre. I won’t bore you with, “If you only read one book this year…” but if you want an unsentimental soap opera without the soap, which is credible and emotionally satisfying, with an ending that will have everyone debating, well, you’ve come to the right novel.

Murray is sly and cheeky. I see the Franzen influence. I also see an incisive David Foster Wallace influence (INFINITE JEST) right here:

“…we are paid in entertainment. The novel was the first instance in what in the twenty-first century has become a vast and proliferating entertainment industry, an almost infinite machine designed to distract us and disempower us. We are presented with a virtual world powered, literally, by the incineration of the real.”

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

You know a book is phenomenal when you eagerly read 650 pages and even then, you’re saddened that the author didn’t write more. That’s the kind of book The Bee Sting is.

After reading Paul Murray’s prior book, Skippy Dies, I knew I was in for a treat. I just didn’t know how much. At its core is a fable: a weary and cold traveler discovers a door in the side of a hill. Inside there is food, music, conviviality, and a warm welcome. The traveler willingly partakes. But the next day, he wakes up alone and stiff on the side of the hill and can no longer. When he arrives back home, he is dismayed to find his home reduced to a pile of stones and his family dead. While he was diverted by entertainment, a hundred years have gone by an that time cannot be regained.

The Barnes family consists of Dickie, the owner of a Volkswagen dealership, his beautiful wife Imelda, daughter Cass who dreams of college in Dublin with her bestie Elaine, and PJ, who is obsessed with video games and existential threats. The family consistently is haunted by events that reshaped the past, the drama that is upending the present, and issues beyond their control for the future – such as the degradation of “normal” life through climate change. They are alienated from each other and even from themselves. They are also the architects of their own life through choices that can, at any time, reach out and destroy them. Slowly but surely, they are being pushed to that door where everything will change.

Much of what they “put out there” are fables they spin themselves. For instance, the book takes its title from a bee sting that Imelda falls victim to on her way her wedding, forcing her to stay veiled the entire time. At least, that’s what everyone believes. Barnes family members put on their metaphorical veil to shelter themselves, but the outside world, along with its threats, is just a thin layer away. As they unconsciously inch closer and closer to events that will undo them and turn their world into something unrecognizable, the novel escalates in tension and the voices begin to integrate together. The last pages are breathtaking and unforgettable.

This book is short-listed for the Booker Prize and if it doesn’t win, there is no justice. I give it 6 stars and envy those about to embark on its journey.

[Jennifer Welsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Mostly a thoroughly enjoyable 5-star read with a disorienting dip in the 3rd quarter that eventually righted itself. But the ending frustrated me to the point of almost erasing all pleasure from the story. After immersing us so much in these lives, the culminating event at the end gave me zero satisfaction. I loved this world for most of the ride, but grrrr right now

[Pedro · Rating 4 out of 5]

After that ending, I’m really not sure about what to say about this… I mean, the writing was very effective, and the author is clearly very comfortable with different writing styles. Characterisation was insane, and so was dialogue (well done, Paul Murray, because that’s how kids and teens talk. Bravo!)

Also, I don’t think there are a lot of authors out there that can manage to keep the wheels in motion throughout more than six hundred pages whilst jumping from one character’s point of view to another and moving backwards and forwards in time.

Another very impressive thing was the way the story unfolded, and how all the twists and turns and big revelations never stopped coming as a surprise. Oh, and I liked the dark humour too, but have to say that, for me, at no point did this story turn into “ahah” kind of funny.

So, yeah, plenty of things to love about this one, but by the end of the day, it just took a long, long time (and maybe too many coincidences) to get to that pain in the neck of an ending.

[Nat K · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Unbearable What an unbearable thing is a life”

*** Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize ***

It’s interesting that the book opens with the grisly murder of a family in the county across from the family this book is about. It was the talk of the town for a long time. The disbelief about how a seemingly “normal” family could find themselves in such dire circumstances. Hold that thought.

This book tells the story of the rise and fall of the Barnes family, circa 2008 when the recession or global financial crisis hits. Looked up to in the local community (either with admiration or jealousy) in the tiny town they live in just outside of Dublin, it’s crunch time. Business has flatlined, and the bottom has fallen out of the motor trade. Nobody can afford to buy a new car, let alone a luxury one, and the business now relies on making repairs to cars. Pretty much existing off the smell of an oily rag, so to speak.

"Probably the worst aspect of the slow, agonizing death of the family business was finding out just how many of the townsfolk were enjoying it - how many of them, for all these years, had hated the Barneses in silence."

Split into five sections, we hear the perspectives of life both in real and nostalgic time, about events which led to the here and now when the economy is failing. Each of the Barnes family members is having an existential crisis of their own and can’t see a way out of it.

Cass at eighteen, is feeling rebellious. Previously close to her father Dickie, she now blames him for the loss of the family’s fortunes and for the “drop” in their living standards. Status really, as she’s ashamed about what the rest of the town is saying about the family’s car dealership going under. Hormones, attitude, discovering boys and binge drinking, it’s all getting very messy very quickly. Cass is off to Uni in Dublin with her best friend Elaine, who she’s perhaps more than a little in love with. She can’t wait to escape from this small town and vows never to return.

PJ is a sweet lad of around twelve. He can see that things aren’t right but can’t quite understand what is going on. He just knows that he's always under his mother’s feet while in the house, so spends much of his time in the woods behind their home, playing war games with real and imagined friends. He has a thirst for scientific facts and is bright. But oh-so-lonely. His best friend, Ethan, is a virtual one, and he’s only conversed with him via text messages. They plan that perhaps PJ should run away to Ethan’s home in Dublin, to scare his parents. Once he’s gone, they’ll realise how much they love and miss him.

Imelda is the Mum and great beauty still, at the ripe age of thirty-four. A goddess with blonde hair and green eyes, any man would be happy to have her. She’s struggling with the family’s finances and has taken to emptying out her closets and selling off clothes on eBay to make ends meet. Furniture too. She fears a divorce is on the cards. She has no relationship with either of her children and spends time gossiping with her female friends about the state of other people’s relationships.

”Your mind is like one big pile of Jenga bricks and if it gets one good prod the whole thing will come tumbling down.”

Dickie is the Dad and a gentle, intelligent man. His alma mater, Trinity College, is the one his daughter Cass is about to leave for. His time at Uni was one of great metamorphosis for him, where he discovered who he truly was. And before that could be fully explored, due to a family tragedy he had to return home to take over the family’s car dealership.

” Loneliness can make people do terrible things, he says. When you set down on this road, you never thought for an instant you would be this lonely, did you?”

This is such a brilliant, amazing, incredible book. It’s all about perceptions and how things aren’t perhaps how they look from the outside. And do we really know what’s going on in someone’s life? It’s about truth and deceit and hiding things from each other, and even yourself. Denying who you are. It’s also a great commentary on modern life, and how despite all the wonder of technology, people can still be desperately lonely. And this was in 2008. Imagine how much more those feelings are felt now.

It’s about grief, sexuality, urges, hypocrisy, revenge porn, blackmail, infidelity, potential child grooming, identity, loneliness, climate change, doomsday prophesying, and living a lie. Pretty much sums up the modern world, doesn’t it.

”And to face up to reality we first need to set aside all of these inventions and disguises we’ve been so busy accumulating. We need to take off our masks.”

This truly is a family saga of epic proportions with a tragi-comedy feel. Think Shakespeare without the soliloquies, and with a gorgeous Irish lilt.

I felt the same thrill, that frisson of excitement that I felt when I read David Mitchell’s first novel Ghostwritten or Trent Dalton’s Boy Swallows Universe. That absolute incredulity of a book that completely captures your attention and keeps you turning the pages to find out what happens next. This book has that same WOW factor. Despite the length, it comes in at a hefty 642 pages, they simply melted away like butter on toast. I didn’t notice at all, and finished it in just over a week, which is unusual for me. That says how damn good it is.

I would love for this to win the Booker. I know I’ve only read three of the other contenders, but this is such a standout for me. One of my favourite books this year, and one that I’d definitely be happy to revisit.

And the last chapter!!! Talk about BOOM💥 What the hell just happened! It builds to a crescendo where you can basically pick your own ending as to what may have occurred. I’d hazard a guess it wasn’t pretty. Which makes me return to my opening line. It’s interesting how Murray opened and closed the book with such abject tragedy.

Is there an actual “bee sting” in the novel? Well you’ll just have read it to find out.

This was an absolute joy to share and buddy read with the wonderful, talented Mr. Neale-ski (@neale📚💙) Please drop by and have a read of his review as well, as he mentions some things I haven’t. We spent a lot of time throwing around ideas and talking about this book. And believe me, there is so much to talk about.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

”You only have to trust in the people who love you, he says. You only have to open your heart up to love.”

”It is for love. You are doing this for love.”

*** Shout out to Randwick City Library. Thank you.***

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hurray to me, I read a 656 page book and that is not my favourite thing to do. I love and prefer books that are compact, do not repeat themselves, and have cleverly written compact sentences. So, an accolade to Murray here for getting me to read this.

Murray tells a meandering tale of the Barnes family and how what you think happened is not what really happened. There is a passage in the book about the need for us to be ourselves, to be seen as we are, without the 'normalising' mask and this is what Murray does, he gives us a picture of the 'normal' family and then starts removing the masks and we see them as they are, with their dysfunctions, obsessions, hopes, needs, vulnerabilities. Lost people like us all, in search of being accepted, of belonging, of being secure and loved.

"We need to take off our masks. And that's hard, after a lifetime of hiding away, it's existentially hard, take it from me. But once you do it, the world is transformed. Once you take off your mask, it's like all the other masks become transparent, and you can see that beneath our individual quirks and weirdnesses, we're the same. We are the same in being different, in feeling bad about being different."

Booker 2023 shortlist

[Michael Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Bee Sting” by Paul Murray– a celebrated Irish author, longlisted for this year’s Booker prize (now on the short list!) – of course I had to read it! Then, being 656 pages, I had to wonder what I had committed to.

This is a family saga, told from the point of view of four of the household members (at least, initially). The Barnes family is reeling from the economic crash following Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom. The father, Dickie, runs the family’s car dealership and things are bleak. His wife, Imelda, is introduced as a fashionable beauty who is appalled at her husband’s recent business failures and does not let him forget it. She has resorted to selling off the family’s goods on Ebay. Not only are the finances plummeting– maybe just as importantly– so is their standing in the community. Ever since the days when Dickie’s father, Maurice, succeeded building the business, townsfolk have viewed the family as a bit high and mighty. People are now savoring the fall from grace as the family seems to disintegrate.

The first two sections are told from the children’s viewpoint. We meet Cass, in high school and making her plans to run off to Trinity College in Dublin. Her brother, PJ, is in grade school and is plotting his own runaway escape. While there is great care taken to draw out these characters, the portrayal of the parents, especially the father, seems flat through the children’s eyes.

Once we get to the parents, however, the world starts opening up. Prior to this, the parents seem no more dimensional than a 1950’s television sitcom family. We get the background on Imelda– brought up in a rough childhood and uneducated, she had her heart set on a fairytale future where she was going to be rescued by a Prince Charming. This section of the book is told in a stream-of-consciousness manner, almost completely void of punctuation, in a manner reflecting her lack of education. This might seem annoying at first, but this device effectively relays her moods and emotions.

Up until this point, Dickie scans as a rather bland and ineffectual father figure– boring! His background is quite a bit different than his children are aware of. It seemed he embraced the role of husband, father, and dull businessman while completely abandoning the path his life wanted to run. Daddy has a past. Daddy has secrets.

The characters are wonderful, believable, and easy to sympathize with. As each one tells the story we get details the others are not aware of, much like a “Rashomon.” As the story returns to events we are enlightened– it dawns on us why characters have been acting as they have, in part due to these black holes in the family’s understanding of each other.

There is a fifth section, told in second person. Here we rapidly switch from character to character with Cass now in college, PJ struggling to keep his parents together, Imelda feeling conflicted over an attempted seduction, while Dickie has thrown himself whole-heartedly into converting a family shed into a survivalist / end-of-days shelter for a future catastrophe. A real confrontation builds when a shadowy villain steps forward to force a crucial, life-changing call to action.

Again, a very long book. It moved along quickly for me as the revelations fleshed out the characters and kept my interest. I am conflicted about the final section of the book. I did not like it at first— and I have seen some reviewers openly hostile to the way it was handled. On second reflection, I see what Paul Murray was doing… it was just a little jarring after the careful pinpoint layering upon layering in the bulk of the telling. Still, an excellent read… the character building was brilliant.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #TheBeeSting #NetGalley

*** Changing my rating from 4 to 5. I cannot get this book out of my head, and... even at over 650 pages, I want to go back and re-devour it. I love how these characters' stories were sculpted. Probably the best book I read in 2023.

[Cheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

This is one that won’t appeal to all, although there are moments that are relatable, as well as captivating, overall I think this is one that many will love, and some will not. The length, a little over 650 pages, will put some people off, which is a shame.

This is a story of family, and so much more than that including love, marriage, death, loss, abuse, and an effort that goes into promises we make to ourselves - to be a better person, the kind we’d like to think that we are, or are at least capable of being. There’s also an aspect of this which seems to weave in and out of the story of a coming apocalypse, and prepping for the end of days.

The crash that left many families in financial distress in 2008 has left this family on the edge of losing everything. They are barely hanging on to the business that Dickie, the father, owns. His wife, Imelda, is prodding him to go to his father to help them out. His teenage daughter, Cass, is - like most teenagers - is going through the things many teen girls go through, while her brother, PJ is going through a growing spurt, and nothing fits him anymore.

This dark comedy covers several themes that don’t feel connected as this begins, but come together as the story continues. It strives to cover and connect these lives of these people who seem pretty determined to set themselves apart from each other. At times - to me - if felt disconnected, and I questioned how these various people’s stories were going to connect, but eventually, it all merges into one unforgettable story.


Pub Date: 15 Aug 2023

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

11th of the 2023 Booker longlist for me to read, ranking 5th in my final ratingss.

I read and enjoyed Murray's previous Booker nominee, Skippy Dies back when it first appeared, and that lead me to subsequent perambulations through his other two novels, which I didn't think were nearly as good. This fourth volume also has a few 'problems', its 656-page length being the primary one.

Also, it's being touted as a 'comic masterpiece' and though it certainly displays a modicum of dry wit (the YOUR NAME ass tattoo being perhaps the highlight!), there are virtually NO LOL moments in it - and its focus on a hugely dysfunctional family, with themes of physical abuse, alcoholism/drug abuse, repressed sexuality, blackmail, murder, squirrel annihilation, etc., doesn't really lend itself to much humour.

Ultimately, you can see why the author goes into such minute detail about each of the four members of the Barnes family which forms the core of the plot, but the novel really doesn't get 'going' till about the one-third mark (for me anyway), with the revelations about patriarch Dickie's secret sexual proclivities. The ending, somewhat open-ended but also rather bleak, is also a bit problematic, since the author's reticence to definitively wrap things up is a bit of a cop-out. But Murray's prose stylings certainly are exemplary throughout, with some of his more florid sentences crying out for rereading.

The Kindle edition is also formatted rather bizarrely, with chapters numbered oddly, and the final chapter suddenly in a different layout that made it difficult to read - annoying! My thanx anyway to Netgalley and FS & G publishers (even though they took away my pre-approved status!!) for the ARC.

[Hugh · Rating 2 out of 5]

Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

My final book from this year's longlist and by a distance its biggest disappointment, though I know it is a book with plenty of fans. I read Skippy Dies, which is rather better, a few years ago, and for the first part of this one we are back in adolescent territory. Though the perspectives get more interesting later, for me this is a book that is too subservient to a plot whose coincidences and contrivances verge on the ludicrous, and though it is blackly funny at times it does not really justify the time spent to read such a long book. Now watch it win...

[Peter Boyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fortunes of the Barnes clan have taken a turn for the worst. The car dealership that Dickie runs is imploding and the rest of the family are beginning to feel the heat. His wife Imelda, a rare beauty, is dismayed to find her lavish lifestyle upended. But she's carrying deeper wounds, and can't shake the notion that Dickie's late brother Frank was her true soulmate. Eldest child Cass is hoping to go university if the family's financial state allows it, though she's more troubled by confused feelings for her undependable pal Elaine. Younger brother PJ is a worrier who is bullied at school - his online friendship with a boy called Ethan is the one hope he clings to. None of them know the anguish that Dickie is going through, as a dark episode from his days at Trinity College still hangs over him. The pressure builds for each family member until it all comes together in a shattering climax.

This is Paul Murray's fourth novel, and he's probably best known for Skippy Dies, a wonderful tragicomic tale of a Dublin boarding school. There isn't as much humour in his latest effort, as the Barnes household lurches from one crisis to the next. The story is narrated in turn by each family member and their voices are distinct. Cass contends with a crush and her sexuality, while my heart bled for PJ, a true innocent who tries his best to do the right thing. I struggled a bit with Imelda's account, not because of the content, but due to the stream of consciousness style it is written in. Dickie's plight though was what moved me most of all: a repressed, tragic figure who is haunted by shame and regret. The book is definitely too long, but it's worth hanging around for the end, as we wonder if the breathless gossip recounted on the first page will echo for the Barnes's. This is an ambitious family saga, rich in pathos, that will reward the patience of its readers.

Favourite Quotes:
"It was the best time, that season of the self; for the most part he was happy, happier than he had ever been. Perhaps that was what made it hard to accept. He had always assumed happiness was for other people, for the plodders, the norms, the sleepwalkers, as the reward for their blinkered conformism. He felt like he ’d been initiated into a secret cult – a group of people who outwardly looked like everybody else, but who concealed a miraculous secret: they were in love."

"The world was made with this kind of life in mind, he came to realise. The world was a machine designed to sustain and perpetuate this kind of life – adult life, normal life. It wasn’t like college, when every moment bristled with pathways, alternatives, strangers and confusion. Everything was linear, everything made sense, the future appeared before him like a railway track, moment by moment, day by day, carrying him onwards without his needing to do a thing."

"She spent money furiously, compulsively. It was as if she didn’t quite believe in it and had to spend it to prove to herself it was real – which in turn made her worry that it was all gone, so she had to spend more to prove that it wasn’t. They were rich now, but she never seemed able to accept it, that this was her life. Instead, wealth was a disguise that had to be continually renewed."

"Only then, when it was lost, did he realise how much he had staked on the moment. For years, for decades, he had been hoping for it, dreaming of it, the time when they would be reunited – feeding himself minuscule doses of a world that could never be. If he hadn’t come here tonight, he could have carried on with it for the rest of his life. Now it was gone."

"This must be what it feels like to be dying, he thinks; the world remains around you, like a lover who does not want to hurt you by leaving, but in spirit it’s already gone, taking with it the meaning of everything you shared. In truth it is already transforming into a future you will never be part of; and you realise only then that it has been transforming all of this time, throughout your whole life, and you with it; and that, in fact, is life, though you never knew, and now it is over."

[Darryl Suite · Rating 5 out of 5]

This broke me in a million different ways. A straight-up tragedy. Loved every single page of this.

SKIPPY DIES is slightly better (I had to say that), but this is easily one of the best books I’ve read all year.

More to come.

[Christopher Febles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Living in a small town outside Dublin, the Barnes family is in a wee bit of trouble. Dickie is struggling to keep afloat the family business, a car dealership owned by his father-in-law. Imelda is dealing with her past demons and trying to keep the house solvent. Cass needs to pass her exams but has friend troubles. PJ just wants to run away.

WOW.



A family drama done beautifully! Each family member’s issues were so well-constructed, so brilliantly described. I had instant empathy for all of the above. I was so invested in each character’s lives, really wanting it all to work out. I felt so bad for each! I loved Cass and her issues with her friend! I loved PJ, wanted him to get away from the bully! Oh, and Imelda’s tale, her long-lost love, his issues, and the “bee sting!” And Dickie’s problems, his history in college! The emotions were really roiling.

I loved the “voices,” too. Each chapter is third person but in the mind of one of the four family members. Later, even some of the side characters are given a voice (and I liked how Big Mike’s voice turned out!). I don’t normally go for the “no punctuation” that was Imelda, but after a while I just adored it. Murray just nails the concerns, feelings, thought processes of each generation. He jumped into a boy’s thoughts, a teenager’s, all. This was Barbara Kingsolver-like.

The flow was wonderful. It’s a long book but didn’t feel like it at all. And a fantastic, crescendo, cliffhanger ending. Excellent!

Side note: I NEED to visit Ireland. I always wanted to see where my grandmother grew up, and maybe see long-lost relatives. Yeah, this seals it.



I loved An Evening of Long Goodbyes and Skippy Dies, but this tops them both. Easily in my top 5, maybe even 2, of the year! GO GET IT RIGHT NOW!!!
--
Trigger warning: graphic rape

[Anne Bogel]

Reviewed in the November 2023 edition of Quick Lit on Modern Mrs Darcy:

I discussed this Booker-shortlisted book in an Industry Insights bonus episode about literary awards for our What Should I Read Next Patreon community. This book also made me realize that I've listened to quite a few Irish novels recently, quite by accident. I found the publisher's descriptions to be quite misleading here, as they made the book sound considerably warmer than I found it to be. (And "funny," what?) Instead expect a multi-generational family saga about the unrelenting and unending troubles and ultimate demise of the ill-fated Barnes family. I listened to the full cast audiobook narration, and while audio isn’t my best reading format for discerning style and structure, it’s still easy to see that character development, structure, and symbolism are brilliantly done. If you can believe it, the book's 700 pages felt like a page-turner closer to half that long, all the way up to the jaw-dropping ending. This is a book that would well reward a re-read, if you can bear it. Please note countless content warnings.

[Neale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker.


The story is about an Irish family that is slowly starting to implode. The Barnes family is a wealthy, or at the very least “financially comfortable” family at the start of the book. But the car business that provides this comfort is crumbling. Fortune is changing for the Barnes family, and this change in fortune affects every member of the family.

Cass, the teenage daughter, is about to head off to Dublin to University, but now that future is in jeopardy. Imelda, the mother, sees her life of luxury sliding of the cliff and is selling everything she can on ebay to stave the slide. Dickie, the father, is off in the woods building a shelter in preparation for the end of the world. And PJ, the young son, just wants the latest video game.

In a nutshell that is what the book is about. The Barnes family and their troubles. The perspective changes between all members of the family. Without giving away spoilers, the rapid perspective shifts and the shortening of the passages builds to an incredible ending.

It is a bit of a “coming of age” novel for the children. Cass and PJ go through all the highs and lows of growing up. Friendships, relationships, popularity, social survival. It is a joy reading the lives of these two siblings.

With Dickie and Imelda, it’s more of an existential crisis that inevitably spills over into the children's lives. The existence of their marriage, their wealth, even themselves.

For me, perception is a theme explored by Murray. Everybody sees things differently. My perception of somebody’s character may be completely different than yours. For example, Dickie believes that his younger brother Frank, thinks he is a bit of a loser. Awkward and solitary, not popular. And yet we find his perception is completely different to how Frank sees Dickie. He looks up to his older brother and is actually a little intimidated by his intelligence. Imelda’s father believes that Frank admires him for his masculinity. Watching old videos of fights from his boxing career, the father believes that Frank is impressed when he is actually scared and abhorred by the father’s violence.

There are so many instances in this book where the reader finds out that an anecdote or character is very different from what most believe.

Just like the wonderful “Skippy Dies”, this novel is darkly comical and yet frighteningly violent at times. There is a character who can see the future. A black dog appearing when somebody is about to die.

Murray consistently returns to an Irish Folk tale in which a man is taken in from a storm, sheltered for the night by folk who turn out to be fairies. The next day when he leaves, 100 years have passed, his family and friends long lost to the ravages of time. Is this story meant to represent the losses that the Barnes family is enduring? He also refers to Bees many times, with the title referring to an instant that provides a startling revelation late in the novel.

Reading this reminded me of how much I enjoyed “Skippy Dies” and reminded me just how gifted a storyteller Murray is. Yes, it is a long novel but if you enjoyed “Skippy Dies” then I believe you will enjoy every page.

This was a buddy read with the wonderful Nat K. Please have a read of her review when she posts it. They are always so much better than mine.

[Krista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good man, Dickie, they said. Maith an fear Good man. The only dampener was the bee sting; she was still wearing the veil. At the same time, was it the worst thing? It suggested a hint of sorrow remaining beneath the surface; it silenced any voices that might otherwise have found the celebrations unseemly, too joyous. In Imelda’s veiled face, anyone who wanted to could divine the pain you had suffered, what it had taken you to get here.

At first, The Bee Sting reads like an ordinary contemporary family drama — beginning from the POV of a teenage girl in her last year of high school, acting out as the aftermath of the Irish recession puts immense financial and social pressure on her bickering parents — but this is a long book (656 pages) and author Paul Murray has plenty of time and space to make this something other than ordinary. After giving each member of the Barnes family a section in which to introduce themselves, Murray rewinds to the childhoods of the parents, narrating the remarkable story of how this unsuitable couple got together, and as the timeline pitches forwards and backwards, we learn the secrets hidden in the heart of each character and grow to understand that no one can ever really know anyone else at all; we can barely know ourselves. The character growth was remarkable, and the plot was compelling, but this is, at its heart, a social issues novel with some trickiness to its construction that will either annoy or impress the reader. I loved many bits of this — I wouldn’t say I loved it overall (even if I could totally see it winning the Booker this year) — but I was definitely impressed. I’ll try to avoid spoilers.

Many of them felt that Imelda was to blame. Dickie made a fortune and Imelda spent two — that was what people said. Imelda, with her cheekbones and her Italian leather boots, got up like the Queen of Sheba just to drive to the supermarket! Giving the poor manager an earful because they didn’t have star anise or tamarind or whatever was supposedly all the rage in New York! It’s a long way from tamarind she was reared, they told each other darkly. It’s a long way from underfloor heating and orthodontists or any of that palaver. Well, look at her now.

Despite Ireland easing itself out of The Crisis (Dickie’s father insists that the recession is over and there’s no reason for the car dealership he founded and left in his son’s hands to manage should still be losing money), Barnes Motors is under threat of closing and Dickie’s family is feeling the pinch: mother Imelda is forced to sell off her designer clothes and furnishings on ebay; daughter Cassie doesn’t see the point of studying for her Leaving Exams if there’s no money to send her to Trinity College in Dublin in the fall; and twelve-year-old son PJ is unaccountably worried that he’ll be sent to boarding school if things don’t turn around. In reaction, Dickie spends more and more time in the woods, working on a bunker for his family’s future security. In the beginning, watching this plotline unspool seems to be the point — and as everyone seems privileged and self-centred (except for PJ), I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to commit to this brick of a novel. But things aren’t really what they seem: everyone has pain and repressed desires; people misrepresent themselves (especially on social media); hammers are swinging every which way; black dogs forewarn danger; even a bee sting isn’t what it seems. This really isn’t about the Barnes family at all.

Several times throughout this novel, Murray references an Irish fairytale about a man who joins a fairy feast inside a hillside and discovers the next morning that he’s been missing for a hundred years. Time slippages — as well as fate and fortune telling and repressed memories — feature throughout, as when Dickie takes Cassie on a tour of Trinity College and remembers his own days studying there:

Even on a normal day, he remembers, passing beneath that arch had always felt like going through a portal — like you were leaving one city and entering another that lay in its midst, a place of pure past. Yet looking at it now he feels as if no time has elapsed at all — as if his own life were still there, continuing somehow untouched by the years, in some eternally resonating present.

This is Imelda considering the vagaries of time (and I see reviewers calling this a Molly Bloom-like stream-of-consciousness, but sections from her POV are really just missing the end-stop periods; her sections do have question marks and exclamation points where appropriate, so I thought of this as something else; a mind basic and untrained?):

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 will all be 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 is gone They don’t tell you How could they How could anyone make sense of that

And the following is from a guest speaker at Trinity, and in my opinion, is the heart of the whole thing:

Global apocalypse is not interested in your identity politics or who you pray to or what side of the border you live on. Cis, trans, black, white, scientist, artist, basketball player, priest — every stripe of person, every colour and creed, we are all going to be hit by this hammer. And that is another fact that unites us. We are all alive together in this sliver of time in which the human race decides whether or not it will come to an end.

It seemed to me that Murray introduced us to the Barneses, and made us understand and care about these people, just to stress that their lives don’t matter in the depths of time; that they are just more human parasites on the planet Earth’s resources. And then, seemingly out of nowhere — just as the climactic scenes are being set up in the final one hundred pages — a paragraph that sounds like it’s a message directly from the author himself appears:

Today, in the developed world, the great threat to political order is that people will pay attention to their surroundings. Thus, even slaves have access to entertainment. You could even say we are paid in entertainment. The novel was the first instance of what in the twenty-first century has become a vast and proliferating entertainment industry, an almost infinite machine designed to distract us and disempower us. We are presented with a virtual world powered, literally, by the incineration of the real.

From this point on, there is much dramatic irony as each character marches inexorably toward danger of their own making — each of them running in a dark wood towards a figurative squirrel trap — and the plot becomes a little breathless and over-the-top, and I started turning the pages faster, wondering if Murray had set up humane traps or if he would swing the hammer down. And I see that some readers think he nailed the ending, and others think he flubbed the ending, but I think he constructed everything very purposefully towards that ending. If a novel is nothing but an example of “an almost infinite machine designed to distract us and disempower us”, what does that say about the kind of reader who has the leisure time to read a brick of a novel for ten or twelve hours? As we march inexorably towards the consequences of our Earth-imperilling lifestyles, couldn’t we be marching in rallies — marching for change — instead? I got the sense in the end that this book is so long — and culminates in scenes that are breathtakingly engaging — to leave me with the feeling that I had been fiddling while Rome burned around me. And I appreciated the trick that Murray pulled off to make me feel that; I’m left impressed.

[Tania · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A long, but spellbinding tale of an Irish family in free fall. Initially we think that their misfortune is caused by financial issues, but as each of the four members of the Barnes family share their innermost thoughts with us, we realize that their issues run much deeper.

We're initially introduced to the two teenagers - Cass and PJ, and although I really felt for PJ (who is probably the most likable character), the story definitely increases in momentum and intensity in the parent's chapters. I love stories where we get to the see the same events through different characters point of view. Paul Murray does a phenomenal job in showing us that we can never know what goes on in people's minds based on their behavior, and I'm not talking about serial killers but just your average family. Each of the narrators has a distinct voice, and I especially enjoyed Imelda's stream of consciousness narrative.

The novel moves forward by repeatedly returning to the past and uncovering more and more layers as we return to the same events. I didn't even pick up on the clever foreshadowing at the beginning of the novel until a day after finishing the book. And although I'm still not a fan of the change in pace in the last section, I am now in awe of what I previously thought to be a weak ending.

This epic family novel definitely deserves it's spot on the Booker's longlist.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

A new novel by Paul Murray is always cause for celebration. Despite having promised us long ago that he was going to go short on the next one, this opus clocks in at 643 pages and it is not too long. In fact, he could have done with a few more pages because he forgot to tell us what happens. Don’t want to be Debbie Downer, but he leaves us high and dry after the flood.

But, as with all things Murray, that turns out to be a good thing. We may not have been able to take, psychologically, what he was dishing out and we could therefore finish the tale in any way that keeps us carrying on carrying on. As in previous novels, he goes down hard for “climate change.” Just sayin’…if you think we have it bad now, just do nothing and see how that turns out.

The most endearing, funny and tragic (all at once) thing about Murray’s stories is that his characters are such vulnerable blunderers, like most of us. We can probably all recite those sore spots in our lives when we made just the worst possible decision because it looked pretty good at the time. At the same time Murray makes us laugh, really laugh at the confusion of a middle school student trying to break through his older sister’s airy dismissals as he tries to get her to concentrate on family issues that are plaguing him. “Butterflies drink crocodile tears!”

Meanwhile, the older sister, a high school student trying to reconcile the bitter spew her beautiful literature teacher has published as poetry, completely misconstrues her father’s distress at his own plight vis à vis his marriage to his dead brother’s financée. Her father continues to dig a hole from which he cannot extricate himself, never explaining nor coming to terms with himself, his family, his needs, his own life…the only thing he has that is truly his.

The central conceit, the bee sting, I think can be interpreted in many ways; one way is to recognize that bees are critical to life on earth and yet have a nasty way of making their presence felt when humans do not pay sufficient attention to their surroundings. A central lesson of the book was that it is difficult to overstate how profoundly the universe does not care about your issues. So, best to put yourself in the best position to pay attention and stop thinking so constantly about how you will be perceived for doing something that feels right.

Best phrase: "His brother's life often reminded him of a soap opera written in crayon."

Brilliant. For the laughs, read it. For the lessons on how to conduct yourself in a f—ked-up world, read it. Rejoice, there is a poet amongst us.

[Melki · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Unbearable What an unbearable thing is a life"

The plot of this can be summed up in one sentence: an Irish family of four struggles through a financial downturn - but it takes 643 pages to really get to know them. This is indeed a deeply immersive read. It was an investment of my time and my emotions. I both loved and hated these characters . . . just like a real family.

That's why the ambiguous ending seemed like such a slap in the face.

Yes, I know the hints are all there, but Dickie has fucked up so many things in his life, doesn't it seem likely he'll blow this as well? And, I'll never know . . .

Anyway, glad I read it . . . I guess?

Thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the chance to read this.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, I found it uneven, overlong, unconvincing, and all a bit too much (there is so much bad luck and there are so many coincidences). But on the other hand, I was interested. I wanted to know all the family drama of the Barnes family. I don’t know how he did it, but Murray succeeded very well in keeping me reading.
Thank you Penguin and Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute mess of a family, with each and every character oddly endearing at times despite their poor choices and flawed characters. Excellent writing, imaginative story-telling, and all strangely believable. My favorite novel this year.

[Carmel Hanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a complex and layered read.

Imelda, Dickie, Cass and PJ are the narrative voices of this hapless family; a family challenged by changing circumstances. A recession is causing the inherited car business to struggle, creating ripples within the family, as that which they thought they could count on starts to erode. As the ground starts to shake for each of them, wafting up through the newly opened cracks are memories of life before now, revelations that reshape perceptions, and new worries that influence thinking and choices.

The progression of this story was like watching that child's game where you drop a ball into a cup and watch it travel unpredictably through a maze of chutes and funnels and tubes. The family interconnections were permeated with secrets, denials (from self and others), broken dreams, "settling", all existing within the larger environment of financial challenges, climate issues, a need to prepare and control, and navigating social environments that are often unkind and even predatory. In other words, this novel packed a LOT into the story. It appeared to pick up speed towards the end, like a boat catching rapids.

I listened to this on audio, due to the length (more time to listen than to read). Despite toggling between the perspectives of four main characters in the narrative and going back and forth in time, it was easy to follow the story. That said, I might have been a tad more engaged had I read a print version. As it was, it was a solid 4 for me.