The Bee Sting
Ratings49
Average rating4.3
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 Dickie is 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 and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda’s wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man?
The Bee Sting, Paul Murray’s exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de force: a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.
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Wow! What a book. I absolutely loved it even as the last 30 pages had me stressfully reading passages and then looking at the next page then jumping back because I couldn't wait to find out what was going to happen. And the ending just leaves you with your heart in your throat. The structure mimics pulling a bow taut and then letting the arrow fly.
If you're not a fan of unique syntax and punctuation (e.g. no quotation marks, no full stops in certain sections), this book will probably not land for you. Unsure of how the audio will be.
This was my first book by Paul Murray and it won't be the last. Glad I sprung for the UK edition!
This seems like a book you'd either love or give up on.
The Bee Sting has some of the best character development I've ever read - each section gives you surprising insight into the family members and shows how the their individual context, personality, and voice impact their interpretation of events.
At the same time, it's a slow read, even factoring in that it's a long book. The toughest part to read (but still genuinely interesting) is a section told in stream of consciousness with no punctuation. Even as the tension rises, events unfold painfully slowly. And the ending....oof.
But if you're willing to take your time and can accept the book's flaws, the good aspects of the book are so strong that I still feel like this warrants 4.75 stars.
A big, meaty family story packed with incident and feeling. I've been knocked out with COVID this week and something like The Bee Sting was exactly what I needed. Alternating POVs from each member of the family with steadily smaller and smaller chonks for each of them. The audiobook really made this a seamless and unputdownable experience. Shades of A Little Life, I Know This Much Is True, that kinda thing, so BE WARNED. My BOTY.
The Bee Sting is a story that we use to gloss over the most important thing in our lives, which we will never ever talk about.
