The Bee Sting
Ratings30
Average rating4.4
15
Ratings30
Average rating4.4
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.
Reviews with the most likes.
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!
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.
This was a different kind of read for me. I can say I appreciated the characters and their struggles. I don't know if I like the style of how this was written. I felt a little lost sometimes with how this was structured. I will say for me this one I will probably be reading again to see if I could get a little more out of it and think about it from another perspective.
There is no doubt: This is a five-star book. The Bee Sting has everything a modern reader wants in fiction including strongly compelling characters, impossible situations, and a realistic setting. There are secrets that hide other secrets that hide other secrets. The characters have nowhere to rest their weary heads. It's a dismal, grim, gritty, bleak, horrific book, and it is completely believable.
So. Do I recommend this book?
If you like dismal, grim, gritty, bleak, and horrific, I strongly recommend it.
If you are like me, however, and a book like this lingers in your gut like bad oysters, you might pass on reading it. I finished it days ago, and still, I feel a little queasy when I think about it.
