Set in Ireland, this book is 650 pages of brilliant character-development and weaving of plot, building to an end we suspect but never confirm. When you finish, you'll want to flip back to the very first sentence.

[Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for an opportunity to read and share my opinion of this book.]

I wanted to love this book and initially I did. But unfortunately it went in too many directions for me and I just didn't vibe with it.

There was definitely a lot of complexity going on in this novel and it switches pov's between each of the family members throughout. There were definitely some parts that I enjoyed more than others. I found Imelda's sections to be a struggle to get through as she was the weakest written character. The ending though was one of the best I have read in a while. Everything comes to a head and even the formatting changed which was something a bit unique. This was quite the undertaking, but I am glad I stuck it out to the end. I want to read more from this author in the future. Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley.

Real Rating: 3.5* of five

This book is A Lot. Long, deep, densely packed.

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

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

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

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

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

No slaying here, though some serious wounds were delivered.

Definitely one of my favorite books this year. The story is well-told and the details still come to mind although it's been a little while since I read this one. I loved the dual timelines and the author's ability to go from one character's perspective to another without losing me. I felt for each and every character and appreciated the emotion that the author invoked in me for the Barnes family. I also loved the suspense. I won't say more about that for fear of giving something away but I was on the edge of my seat waiting to find out how this story was going to end. Let's just say that the ending was satisfying for me! 4.75 stars.

One thing about me is I WILL be reading a huge novel about a family at a crossroads. Inevitably, I saw some Jonathan Franzen comparisons, and while that is a frequently proffered comp, you likely know by now that that’s bound to work on me (my father!!). However, I do find the comparison apt here. The characters feel alive and true; their personalities, ambitions, faults, and self-delusions are rendered with exactitude and heart. There’s a sense of humor and control underpinning the narrative that feels like you’re in good hands.

Following a struggling family in postcrash Ireland, this was incredibly engaging, even from the first line: “In the next town over, a man had killed his family.” The twists and ending have stayed with me since finishing; truly unforgettable, peak storytelling. Read it!

Murray remains one of the best working writers of the family saga. This was truly exceptional. Moving and sturdy.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray initially seems like a lighthearted family drama, but it quickly devolves into darker themes. The Barnes family faces a series of escalating crises: Dickie retreats into building a doomsday bunker, Imelda sells her jewelry to make ends meet, and their children, Cass and PJ, struggle with their own personal demons. The novel’s shift from humor to heavy, emotional turmoil is both unexpected and deeply affecting.

Every time I read Paul Murray I feel miserable. And not in that powerful, I’m reveling in all the intense feelings kind of way. It’s just straight up misery for misery’s sake, and while I do think Murray has notable talent as a writer, I find misery porn to be entirely off-putting in such a way that good or even great writing isn’t enough to overcome it to rescue the reader experience.

I didn’t like Skippy Dies for the same reasons, but hoped this one would be different, as many people whose taste I respect and often agree with enjoy Murray’s work. But I just can’t get past the wallowing for wallowing’s sake, and the plot seems like it exists only to feed the characters’ angst.

I also think this (like Skippy) ran entirely too long. The writing isn’t beautiful enough that I want the book to go on endlessly just to revel in the writerly aspects or the atmosphere, and it leaves the book with an air of self-indulgence about it, as though it needed a more exacting editor.

If you like what I would personally describe (admittedly pejoratively so) as tragedy porn, there’s no reason not to read this. Murray is no slouch as a writer, and he certainly has a knack for evocative character description. But if you’re like me and don’t find this level of misery intriguing or even worth indulging, then this is one to skip.

No reader could feel jealous of the Barneses, a family of four falling into disrepair collectively and individually. The family-run auto shop and car dealership led by Dickie suffered in the post-2008 recession and never quite recovered. Dickie’s own personal mismanagement and repressed secrets certainly don’t help matters. To Imelda, Dickie’s wife, his behavior is nothing short of infuriating. Imelda, who grew up in poverty as the daughter of a low-level gangster, desperately craves stability but is quietly reckoning with her own tragedy from early in life. While their children might not be aware of the depth of Dickie and Imelda’s issues, they certainly notice that something is wrong. Cass, formerly a star student, falls headlong into an all-encompassing, binge-drinking filled friendship with a fellow-classmate as exit certification exams approach. Her younger brother PJ, a sweet twelve-year-old in love with science and random facts about the world, is afraid to tell his parents that his bloody feet have outgrown his shoes and instead finds solace in a friend he meets online who tries to convince PJ to run away with tempting stories of a Dublin house with a sunroof, loving parents, and a dog. As the story moves between characters and jumps from past to present, a fuller picture emerges of the Barneses in all their tragic ingloriousness.

Coming in at a whopping 656 pages, The Bee Sting requires an investment of one’s time. But wow is it worth the investment. This book garnered a lot of hype when it was released, was long-listed for the Booker prize, and earned its spot on The New York Times Top 10 Books of the Year in 2023. Murray’s writing is acerbic, witty, and nothing short of masterful. While it’s not always clear where Murray is going - indeed, at about the halfway point I started to wonder if the book was long just to be long - somehow, he’s able to tie it all back together, linking references he made in the first pages to jaw-dropping, heart-pounding revelations at the end. By the final fifty pages I couldn’t and wouldn’t put the book down, having fully given myself over to the expert craftsmanship that is Murray’s writing, structure, and pacing.

An excellent book by Paul Murray! It’s quite long but I enjoyed the different perspectives from each member of the family.

I recently finished reading The Bee Sting and I absolutely loved the character development in it. The way the characters were portrayed made them feel so real and their actions were really believable. The emotional impact of the book was just so strong. It's definitely a slow-burning masterpiece! Rating it is tough because, while the writing style was captivating, I did find it a bit confusing with all the changing perspectives and timeframes. The middle part of the book slowed down a bit for me, but the ending was suspenseful, although it did feel a bit drawn out and wacky. The author is clearly talented, but I think they could benefit from telling the story with fewer words.

To be completely frank, Paul Murray’s THE BEE STING is a challenging read, but it’s a challenge that pays off spectacularly. Murray is an Irish writer influenced by fellow Irishman James Joyce: in this large, complex and ultimately devastating novel about the rise and fall of the Barnes family, Murray plays with form, structure and point-of-view, using stream of consciousness at one point in the narrative, switching to the “you” voice at a key dramatic moment, and crashing the points-of-view of major characters together during the novel’s wild climax. All this technical play is in service to a powerful, highly engaging story: as the economy of Ireland continues to struggle after the 2008 financial crash, Dickie Barnes’s car business is faltering and he’s building a bunker in the forest behind his house in case the world ends. His teenage daughter Cass drinks her way through evaluations for university admisson, his 12-year-old son PJ plans to run away from home and wife Imelda mourns the loss of the high life, wondering why her husband isn’t talking to her. Murray expertly takes us back two decades to tell the story of Imelda and Dickie’s tricky relationship and reveals many past secrets that complicate the present. The book’s large scope and scale makes room for not only a tangled multi-decade domestic drama but also a dazzling literary tour de force that takes on climate change, economic distress, social media, class, identity, desire and the amazing complexities of being alive.

I'm not a fan of long books and this 700 pager was a slow burn. This slow burn however does eventually start to pick up speed until the very end when I was completely blown away, so stick with it. This is the story of the Barnes family and takes place in a small town in Ireland. Imelda, the mother, comes from a dysfunctional single parent family. Dickie, the father, although went to university in Dublin, was groomed to be in charge of the family car dealership. Cass, the daughter, is a typical angsty teenager, longing to leave her small town and find herself. Lastly, PJ, the tween son who is a good hearted kid that always seems to be in some kind of trouble. The first part of this story goes into each of the characters in depth. Each member of the family is keeping secrets and this complete lack of communication between them appears that it will be the ruin of them all, as individuals and as a family. The ending is jaw dropping. This is the kind of book that will stick with me for a very long time. I absolutely loved it!

"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.

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.

The character development is absolutely phenomenal in The Bee Sting. It is rare to read a book where the characters are so fully realized, to the point that their actions at the thrilling end don't come as a surprise and yet the emotional impact is not dulled. There were multiple points in the story where I was unsettled by the events unfolding for a character to the point I was holding my breath. The Bee Sting is a slow burn.

I just finished this book and am sitting here stunned by Paul Murray's brilliance.
To describe the plot would, by no means, do it justice. To describe it as the unraveling of an Irish family after the Crash merely outlines the trauma and tragedy a family experiences.
The writing is phenomenal. The book needs to be digested and will stick with me indefinitely as I absorb all that it is about. The story is so potent. Each individual Barnes family member c0uld have been the focus of a book but to have them intertwined in the way they were, was incredible.
The book was truly staggering. What a triumph!

The Bee Sting will leave you wanting to quit reading because you are not sure that you can top this book. It is truly a masterpiece.

The Bee Sting is a mesmerizing epic that I've thought about ever since I finished its final page. Paul Murray weaves the lives of his characters together so seamlessly!

What an expensive story. Each of the members of the Barnes family could have their own full novel, but in the Bee Sting we see such in depth looks at each of them woven together masterfully. so many times this one took my breath away and ripped my heart out. Absolutely stunning.