The Bee Sting

Paul Murray was born in Dublin in 1975 and is the author of <i>An Evening of Long Goodbyes</i> <i>Skippy Dies</i> <i>The Mark and the Void </i>and <i>The Bee Sting</i>. <i>An Evening of Long Goodbyes</i> was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. <i>Skippy Dies </i>was shortlisted for the Costa Novel award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and longlisted for the Booker Prize. <i>The Mark and the Void</i> won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2016. Paul Murray lives in Dublin. <b>It can't be overstated how purely pleasurable <i>The Bee Sting</i> is to read</b>. <b>Murray's brilliant new novel about a rural Irish clan posits the author as Dublin's answer to Jonathan Franzen . . . A 650-page slab of compulsive high-grade entertainment <i>The Bee Sting</i> oozes pathos while being very funny to boot . . .</b> Murray's observational gifts and A-game phrase-making render almost every page - every line it sometimes seems - abuzz with fresh and funny insights . . . At its core this is a novel concerned with the ties that bind secrets and lies love and loss. They're all here brought to life with captivating vigour in a first-class performance to cherish <b><i>The Bee Sting</i> is the finest novel that Murray has yet written</b> <b>and will surely be</b> <b>one of the books of 2023</b> . . . It bears comparison to the brilliant comic writer Jonathan Coe... But Murray is his own writer capable of keeping a multi-faceted and compulsive plot moving along with alacrity and confidence while seamlessly blending drama comedy and heartbreak... <b>For 13 years Paul Murray has been best known as the author of <i>Skippy Dies</i>. That I suspect is about to change</b> <b>Expertly foreshadowed and so intricately put together a brilliantly funny deeply sad portrait of an Irish family in crisis . . . </b>Murray is triumphantly back on home turf - troubled adolescents regretful adults secrets signposted and exquisitely revealed each line soaked in irony ranging from the gentle to the savage . . . We live though hundreds of pages on tenterhooks and the suspense and revelations keep coming until the end [...] He is brilliant on fathers and sons sibling rivalry grief self-sabotage and self-denial as well as the terrible weakness humans have for magical thinking... <b>A tragicomic triumph</b> <b>you won't read a sadder truer funnier novel this year</b> An <b>immersive brilliantly structured beautifully written</b> mega-tonne that is <b>as laugh-out-loud funny as it is deeply disturbing</b> . . . <b>Paul Murray the undisputed reigning champion of epic Irish tragicomedy has done it again </b>. . . <i>The Bee Sting</i> is <b>as ambitious as anything that has gone before but with a focus and shape that grants it great depth as well as breadth</b>. Seriously all you need is this your suntan lotion and a few days off work and you're good to go . . . I didn't see the plot twists coming. And they keep on coming And coming again . . . <b>This is too short a review to describe a book so dense yet so compelling</b>. I began with an ovation. I'll end abruptly and in awe <b>No one writes tragicomedy as good as this . . . Both brilliant entertainment and a penetrating look at the human condition as heavy with pathos as it is rich with humour. And if 650 pages asks a lot of the reader in this case it more than delivers </b> <b>Delightfully rackety raucously funny... </b>Ideology takes a backseat here to feeling - doubt guilt lust longing... <i>The Bee Sting</i> is on a par with <i>Skippy Dies</i> Murray's most beloved book and certainly exceeds it in ambition.<b> A masterpiece</b> <b>Bold [and] expansive</b> <b>. . . Paul Murray is consistently inventive observant and funny.</b> He is on intimate terms with this preteen boy this teenage girl this lost middle-aged man and this semi-educated woman and he knows how to make them vivid . . . The pages turn rapidly as farce and tragedy converge the latter threatening to get the upper hand <b>This novel is as generous expansive and glorious as a cathedral</b> as intimate as pillow-talk and as funny and heartbreaking as nothing you've read before. <b>Paul Murray may just be the most spellbinding storyteller writing today. A magisterial piece of work</b> <b>Murray is a natural storyteller who knows when to withhold to indulge to surprise. </b>He specialises like Dickens in lengthy sagas that are mammoth in scope <b>generous with detail and backstory flush with humour and colourful characters</b> all of it steeped in social realism . . . Stylistically <i>The Bee Sting</i> is <b>an ambitious expansive novel</b>. There are shifts in perspective tone voice era and milieu . . . <i>The Bee Sting</i> is <b>hugely entertaining tragicomic fiction</b> Paul Murray's patter is so fluid funny and clever . . . <b>There's laughter in every other line but there's also a compassion and a midlife wisdom at work </b>. . . As events unfold - <b>no sentence a chore or lacking in bounce </b>- it becomes apparent that the novel is also <b>exceptionally smartly structured.</b> Quirky details strike back later in the narrative with unexpected force . . . <b>the writing never loses vitality</b> <b>Carefully paced brilliantly convincing and helped along by plenty of subtle satire </b>. . . <b>a huge marbled wagyu steak of a novel that ranges confidently from humane to horrifying</b>. It's a classic family saga in the mode of <i>The Corrections </i>or <i>The Sound and the Fury . . . </i>Murray delights in taking a stock type -- the sullen pubescent the frazzled mother -- and exploding it with ambiguity and empathy . . . <b>An immensely enjoyable piece of expert craftsmanship</b> A family lurches into financial and emotional crisis in full view of judgmental neighbours in this <b>astute remorselessly funny novel </b>about how people are invariably more complex than they first appear . . . Murray tackles some of the biggest issues facing our society in a <b>thoughtful tragicomic novel</b> exploring smalltown society and social class <b>Breathtaking blackly comic Murray's style is entirely and distinctively his own</b> . . . <b>Handling the plot as if it were a Rubik cube</b> [he] gives each character their voice in a carousel of first-person accounts tracking backwards and into the present . . . <b><i>The Bee Sting </i>is an immersion in the tragedy of what-might-have-been</b> The tale of a dysfunctional family trying to hold things together. <b>It's a thing of beauty a novel that will fill your heart</b> <b>I experienced just about every possible human emotion while reading <i>The Bee Sting</i></b> and at an intensity I have not felt with a work of fiction for a long time. <b>Its ambition and scale are astonishing and as a sheer technical feat of storytelling it is remarkable.</b> Reading it I was constantly reminded of what the novel as an artform is capable of and what it is for. <b>It might be a bold claim to make of the author of <i>Skippy Dies</i> that this new book is the best thing Paul Murray has ever done - but I'm making it anyway because it's true</b> <b>Paul Murray is my favourite young Irish novelist</b> <b>and <i>The Bee Sting</i> confirms all of his talents. Settle in for a hilarious whirlwind of a familial socioeconomic misadventure as only Murray would write it</b> The idea of being swept up and spat out by falsehoods runs through much of Murray's work . . . There are storylines about doomsday preppers and local GAA teams; themes of class economic collapse ecological catastrophe . . . <b>Murray's conversations have an expansive tendency. A single thread can lead him outwards in a web of connections metaphors jokes before he lands smoothly back on the point </b> <p><b>'A tragicomic triumph. You won't read a sadder truer funnier novel this year' <i>Guardian</i></b><br><br><b><i>'</i>It's a thing of beauty a novel that will fill your heart' <i>Observer</i><br><br>'Hugely entertaining vivid ambitious and expansive . . . Murray is a natural storyteller'<i> Irish Times</i><br><br>'An expansive and blackly funny tale' Tanya Sweeney <i>Irish Independent</i></b><br><br><b>Irresistibly funny wise and thought-provoking <i>The Bee Sting </i>is </b><b>a tour de force about family fortune and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart . . .</b><br><br>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 jewellery on eBay while their teenage daughter Cass formerly top of her class seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.<br><br>Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac a casual favour 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?</p> <p><b>'A tragicomic triumph. You won't read a sadder truer funnier novel this year' <i>Guardian</i></b><br><br><b><i>'</i>It's a thing of beauty a novel that will fill your heart' <i>Observer</i></b><br><br><b>Irresistibly funny wise and thought-provoking <i>The Bee Sting </i>is </b><b>a tour de force about family fortune and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart . . .</b><br><br>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 jewellery on eBay while their teenage daughter Cass formerly top of her class seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.<br><br>Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac a casual favour 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?</p>