The Bee Sting

by Paul Murray

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.

We are presented with a virtual world powered, literally, by the incineration of the real.

It’s a high price to pay, isn’t it. Taking a life. Victor, beside you in the trench, his hand on your shoulder. I’ve been so stupid, you whisper. Loneliness can make people do terrible things, he says. When you set out on this road, you never thought for an instant you would be this lonely, did you?