An exceptionally long novel that is also a small multigenerational story about the inability to escape the past -- even if our mistakes weren't supposed to be mistakes, even if our decisions were made with the best intentions. Murray writes the hell out of these paragraphs and sentences (including the many that lack punctuation), and the characters are vivid and funny and anguished. Is there still a place in the culture for a 656-page novel about four regular people? I love books, and I come from a world of regular people, and yet still I'm not so sure.

First, we’ll state the obvious and say this book is long. Now, that is not inherently a bad thing, nor did I feel for a large portion of the book that the book was rambling or unnecessary. I *do* want to say, however, that I felt the book’s length. It’s akin to a movie like Australia by Baz Luhrman where everything works but every section also felt like a full novel in and of itself.

I also do get it’s recurrence on book prize lists this season. It’s topical, it’s funny, it’s dark, it’s formally inventive, and it’s (for the most part) fairly sensitive. Spoilers to follow.

By the end of the book, and the farther I get from reading it, the more the last third of the book does increasingly offend me. First, I don’t have time for a straight male author forcing a gay character to suffer assault. This feels slightly hypocritical based on books I’ve loved from Queer authors and straight women, but that already left a poor taste in my mouth.

The fact that Murray couples that with an unrelenting blackmail campaign while an incredibly toxic straight male character who largely gets by unscathed was infuriating to me. And then the fact that he has that same straight man commit a random and unnecessary act of violence against a woman just to get to the “explosive” final scene.

I love a chunky, family drama and I’m always glad when a book prize longlist includes one. On this year’s International Booker list, it was A System So Magnificent it is Blinding, and now on the English Booker, it’s Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting. Nice and chunky and I was glad to buddy read it with other bookstagrammers.

Like its longlist companion, If I Survive You, The Bee Sting is a story told from a variety of points of view. The story of the Barnes family, owners of the eponymous car dealership in a small Irish town is one of secrets and mysteries which Murray helps us uncover by giving each family member their own section, first teenaged daughter Cass, then tween brother PJ, followed by their parents, first appearance-conscious mother Imelda, and finally, father Dickie. And then, in the final section, there’s a increasingly escalating rotation between each POV as the stakes of the narrative ratchet ever higher into the kind of ending you’d expect in a thriller movie where the camera is following each character and the audience is yelling “Noooooo!!!”).

The Bee Sting appears to be one of those books which divides people, some love it while others definitely don’t. I enjoyed the process of unpacking a messy family history that touches on all kinds of issues (classism, homophobia, familial obligation, expectations of women, and lots more). It is a book about how family obligations necessitate secrets which, when they are eventually exposed, lead to more ruinous consequences than would have likely occurred if everyone had just been open in the first place. If that makes sense.

There are definitely some important warnings for readers including intimate partner assault, child abuse, animal death among them. It can be a lot but it’s a big book so these don’t weigh the story down in the way they might in a shorter book (looking at you, Old God’s Time). I haven’t yet decided whether The Bee Sting will make my personal short list, but I did enjoy it.

11th of the 2023 Booker longlist for me to read. ranking 4th so far.

I read and enjoyed Murray's previous Booker nominee, Skippy Dies back when it first appeared, and that lead me to subsequent perambulations through his other two novels, which I didn't think were nearly as good. This fourth volume also has a few 'problems', its 656-page length being the primary one. Also, it's being touted as a 'comic masterpiece' and though it certainly displays a modicum of dry wit (the YOUR NAME ass tattoo being perhaps the highlight!), there are virtually NO LOL moments in it - and its focus on a hugely dysfunctional family, with themes of physical abuse, alcoholism/drug abuse, repressed sexuality, blackmail, murder, squirrel annihilation, etc., doesn't really lend itself to such.

Ultimately, you can see why the author goes into such minute detail about each of the four members of the Barnes family which forms the core of the plot, but the novel really doesn't get 'going' till about the one-third mark (for me anyway), with the revelations about patriarch Dickie's secret proclivities. The ending, somewhat open-ended but also rather bleak, is also a bit problematic, since the author's reticence to definitively wrap things up is a bit of a cop-out. But Murray's prose stylings certainly are exemplary throughout, with some of his more florid sentences crying out for rereading.

The Kindle edition is also formatted rather bizarrely, with chapters numbered oddly, and the final chapter suddenly in a different layout that made it difficult to read - annoying!

This was really looong.
That being said, it was a great character study of a family in crisis. The narrative perspective shifts between all four members of the Barnes family - mother, father, daughter and son - and a couple other minor characters towards the end. The switching perspectives took a little while to get used to, but once I did, I found it an effective storytelling tool for laying out all of their dysfunction that’s been brewing for years.
I thought the author made some weird choices, though, like eschewing punctuation for some chapters, and writing in second person for all of the characters towards the end of the book.
I’m sure he had reasons that made sense to him, but I couldn’t figure it out.
Thanks to #netgalley and #farrarstrausgiroux for this #arc of #thebeesting by #paulmurray in exchange for an honest review.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. Thank you @fsgbooks @netgalley for providing me with an advance copy of the epub!

Impressions: The Bee Sting by Paul Murray follows the shared (and not shared) lives of the Barnes family as they navigate challenging times in the face of a failing family business. Told in separate sections recounted by each family member we learn about how thye are dealing with the challenges in their own ways. Cass, the teen almost out the door to university, is binge drinking and blowing off her studies, PJ the adolescent is trying to scrape up money to pay off someone threatening him because he thinks PJ’s father stole money from his family, Imelda the wife is contemplating her past while looking for ways to feel less lonely, and Dickie the father is building a bunker in the woods preparing for the end of the world. The storytelling is not linear with a number of flashbacks providing us with information that helps understand the state we find the family in the present day.

This book started a bit slow for me. For some reason, I thought the first section from the perspective of Cass was fine, but it also didn’t really engage me. Then I started PJ’s section and it pulled me right in. From that point forward, the story just continued to build for me and my investment and adoration continued to grow with every page. Murray manages to expertly craft a family story that includes the small, often mundane details of daily life (which I love) while at the same time including many unexpected and surprising revelations throughout that made me want to keep reading. At times I was on the edge of my seat, terrified for what would come next. At the same time there were other sections (especially Imelda) that at the moment felt very long, but by the end I would probably be happy to read an entire 600+ page book on each character.

While there are obviously a lot of things going on in a 600+ page book, one of the things that most resonated with me was the shared experience of the characters related to their desire for connection while at the same time a longing for something they didn’t have and an intense desire to escape. Such a great portrayal of having what you want but not wanting what you have. Also an interesting exploration of the consequences to ourselves as well as those around us of hiding parts of ourselves or trying to pretend that essential parts of our being aren’t there and how it contributes to our loneliness and longing for something else. And ultimately how in the end, for better or worse, you’re in it together.

There is definitely a climate change and doomsday prepping element in the backdrop of this novel, as well as some aspects that I believe were lost on me because I’m missing some context as an American and am not familiar with Ulysses. Thankfully my buddy readers helped with some of this but I think it would have been helpful knowing some of this going in.

This book has been called humorous (a tragicomedy) and personally I didn’t read it that way. I did at times try to find humor in these pages but for me most of the book was heavy and tragic. So if you go into this looking for a laugh you might want to reconsider or reset your expectations. Or you might see the humor that I didn’t.

I am so grateful to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and Netgalley for the advanced copy, but the formatting of the ending in the eARC was a little difficult to follow and I think it dampened the impact of the ending for me. This may have been fixed in the final epub but if you can get your hands on a paper copy for the ending I would recommend it.

This book is long but it is so good it is worth the investment. I highly recommend it and even though this is the only book I have read so far off the @bookerprize 2023 long list I’m sure it is a strong contender to win.

I haven't been this excited to answer the "What are you reading" question in a long time. On the plane, or to friends, or at the nail salon. The Bee Sting has been my enthusiastic response for the past few weeks.

Set in and around Dublin around the 2009 financial crisis, it's a big sweeping family drama, told from the perspectives of each member. Teenage Cass going through her teenage problems with her questionable bff, getting in and out of trouble, trying to pass her exams and escape the small town village, goes first. Next up is preteen PJ, a gamer, bullied at school, kind of ignored at home, making questionable online friends. The parents, beauty queen Imelda and inept car salesman Dickie get passing references in these sections, just little glimpses, they're the background to the kids' stories.

Then of course we get their sections and they go deep. Deep into their pasts (which explains multitudes about the present), minor decisions or events that propel the narrative in its inevitable direction:

"Life at that time was like walking on a path made of spinning tops You took a step you were spun off one way The next step spun you off another Every moment was the moment when everything changed."

We spend hundreds of pages with each character and each page grows empathy with them. Murray pokes fun (this is a tragi-comedy saga) but it's not mean, it's relatable.

Every page is packed with beautiful prose. Each sentence is a work of art:

"On and on, up and down, the exhausting flux of emotions locked tight inside you, like a rollercoaster in a prison."

I loved reading this book, and truly thought it could have been a few hundred pages longer (it clocks in at around 650).

My thanks to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the ARC. The Bee Sting was published in August 2023.

DNF. Sorry, but I tried 4 times to get into this story and I just can't relate. Cass and Elaine are supposed to be studying for their leaving certificate, but are hanging out in bars, kissing boys and ignoring their studies. I read or skimmed up to the time they take the exam.

It bored me enough to fall asleep twice. The other 2 attempts found me skimming as it was so slow and empty of anything interesting that it did not make me care what was happening.

Maybe it got better after I gave up, but I will not be going back to finish.

Thank you NetGalley for an advance reader copy. Opinions expressed here are my own and are given voluntarily.

"Unbearable What an unbearable thing is a life"

The plot of this can be summed up in one sentence: an Irish family of four struggles through a financial downturn - but it takes 643 pages to really get to know them. This is indeed a deeply immersive read. It was an investment of my time and my emotions. I both loved and hated these characters . . . just like a real family.

That's why the ambiguous ending seemed like such a slap in the face.

Anyway, glad I read it . . . I guess?

This is the story of a family who falls apart in the aftermath of Ireland's 2008 economic crisis. The Barnes's are among the wealthiest families in a small town in the middle of Ireland, owning and running a car dealership there. When the crash comes, it seems for awhile like they can sail through, and then it seems like they might sail through with a little belt-tightening. And then it seems the sailing days are over.

Murry begins this story with Cass, who plans to attend university in Dublin and live with her best friend. When the financial pressures become evident, so does the disparity in the relationship with her best friend. Cut adrift, Cass has trouble concentrating on her exams, and as her normal teenage woes veer into more serious terrain, it's clear her parents aren't paying attention. Then there's PJ, a sweet child, who may spend his time playing truly frightening video games, but that hasn't affected his sensitive heart, which notices his parents's troubles and does his part to not bother them, no matter what. He's found an on-line friend who is supportive which his parents definitely don't notice.

Murray's skill as a writer is in full display as, having killed all sympathy for these negligent parents, he proceeds to tell their stories and to force the reader to care about them. Murray writes each character so well, each has a voice of their own and the mother's section was just fantastic -- written in a stream-of-consciousness that reflects who she is. The book opens with long sections for each of the four family members, then moving between them more rapidly as the novel builds to its conclusion. We've all read books that end pages, or even chapters, later than they should have. This is the first time I've encountered a book that deliberately ended too early. I'm not sure what to think of that.

Always so exciting when a new Paul Murray is coming out. This was a beautiful read, totally deserving of it's Booker Nomination.

What a strange 600+ page book. I suppose, since it's that long, it's naturally for me to have a few different opinions on it and feel like I read 4 different books instead one of one huge one. THE BEE STING was a must-read because I adored Paul Murray's SKIPPY DIES, which I read more than a decade ago and remembered loving. This book is very different though. Set in current day Ireland, it follows a middle class family in the middle of various different crises. We learn more about each family member through different chapter. Some I loved, others were almost unreadable. It's a massive, perfectly uneven book that I'm sure many people will see as a masterpiece. I see it as a novel I'm glad I read but may think twice about picking up Murray's next book.

“The Bee Sting” by Paul Murray– a celebrated Irish author, longlisted for this year’s Booker prize – of course I had to read it! Then, being 656 pages, I had to wonder what I had committed to.

This is a family saga, told from the point of view of four of the household members (at least, initially). The Barnes family is reeling from the economic crash following Ireland’s Celtic Tiger boom. The father, Dickie, runs the family’s car dealership and things are bleak. His wife, Imelda, is introduced as a fashionable beauty who is appalled at her husband’s recent business failures and does not let him forget it. She has resorted to selling off the family’s goods on Ebay. Not only are the finances plummeting– maybe just as importantly– so is their standing in the community. Ever since the days when Dickie’s father, Maurice, succeeded building the business, townsfolk have viewed the family as a bit high and mighty. People are now savoring the fall from grace as the family seems to disintegrate.

The first two sections are told from the children’s viewpoint. We meet Cass, in high school and making her plans to run off to Trinity College in Dublin. Her brother, PJ, is in grade school and is plotting his own runaway escape. While there is great care taken to draw out these characters, the portrayal of the parents, especially the father, seems flat through the children’s eyes.

Once we get to the parents, however, the world starts opening up. Prior to this, the parents seem no more dimensional than a 1950’s television sitcom family. We get the background on Imelda– brought up in a rough childhood and uneducated, she had her heart set on a fairytale future where she was going to be rescued by a Prince Charming. This section of the book is told in a stream-of-consciousness manner, almost completely void of punctuation, in a manner reflecting her lack of education. This might seem annoying at first, but this device effectively relays her moods and emotions.

Up until this point, Dickie scans as a rather bland and ineffectual father figure– boring! His background is quite a bit different than his children are aware of. It seemed he embraced the role of husband, father, and dull businessman while completely abandoning the path his life wanted to run. Daddy has a past. Daddy has secrets.

The characters are wonderful, believable, and easy to sympathize with. As each one tells the story we get details the others are not aware of, much like a “Rashomon.” As the story returns to events we are enlightened– it dawns on us why characters have been acting as they have, in part due to these black holes in the family’s understanding of each other.

There is a fifth section, told in second person. Here we rapidly switch from character to character with Cass now in college, PJ struggling to keep his parents together, Imelda feeling conflicted over an attempted seduction, while Dickie has thrown himself whole-heartedly into converting a family shed into a survivalist / end-of-days shelter for a future catastrophe. A real confrontation builds when a shadowy villain steps forward to force a crucial, life-changing call to action.

Again, a very long book. It moved along quickly for me as the revelations fleshed out the characters and kept my interest. I am conflicted about the final section of the book. I did not like it at first— and I have seen some reviewers openly hostile to the way it was handled. On second reflection, I see what Paul Murray was doing… it was just a little jarring after the careful pinpoint layering upon layering in the bulk of the telling. Still, an excellent read… the character building was brilliant.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus and Giroux and to NetGalley for providing an advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review. #TheBeeSting #NetGalley

I’m not really sure how to feel about this book. While the writing was mostly enjoyable the last third of the book left a lot to be desired. Lots of mistakes in this family, and town for that matter. Sad stories abound. But does the reader have a chance to feel sorry for any of them? Not really.

This was a great sprawling family novel. It’s long. But never feels unnecessary. There were elements I didn’t love, but that was due to personal opinion rather than overall worth.

I received a copy of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley.

I am quitting this at 17% which, given the length of the book, means I gave it a good go! The first section was from the perspective of teenage daughter Cass, who spends her days in thrall to her 'friend' Elaine, hanging out with her boyfriend whom she doesn't even like, and drinking when she should be revising. She is also troubled by the fact that her parents are quarrelling and her dad's business failing. Then the second section is from the perspective of her brother PJ, who spends his days hanging out with the horrible Nev, whom he doesn't really like, and worrying about his parents.

I thought the writing was good, but I find this depressing and I want to tell Cass and her family to stop caring so much about what other people think and become their own people, but I fear they won't do that and I can't cope with the hostility and submission to bullying any more.

Not for me.

I loved this in the beginning. Murray has such a gift with character voice and every character POV felt distinct and unique. The first half felt propulsive but at a certain point lost momentum and the length felt unbearable.

This is a long book and I wasn’t sure if it was going to hold my attention, but I found the 2nd half to be a page-turner and I was rewarded for sticking with it. The book’s billing is a little off. The blurb calls it “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.” I did not find it funny. Awful things happen to the main characters and most of the book is about the struggle to right the ship amid the tumult of everyday life. I guess parts of it could be considered dark comedy, but it didn’t make me laugh.

There are several important characters in this novel and each provides a distinct and interesting voice. At the core is Dickie Barnes, who has inherited his father’s car business, but is having trouble keeping it afloat in a recession. Dickie’s wife, Imelda, struggles with the fact that Dickie is not the love of her life.Their daughter, Cass, is focused on getting out of the family’s influence by going to college in Dublin, where she grapples with identity and her sexuality. And then there is 12-year-old PJ, who gets caught up in his father’s plans to provide shelter for the family in the event of an apocalypse.

There are many themes here. Love, loss, friendship, abuse, sexuality, and climate change are at the forefront. The book is a little on the long side, but it makes good on each of its themes and the end justifies its length. As for the title…the “reveal” of the bee sting theme is one of the most satisfying aspects of the book. It and the ending would make for a fun discussion in book club. Recommended for those who appreciate deep character development and don’t mind a dark outlook.

Is it possible to pinpoint the exact moment when your life took a downward trajectory? Dickie and Imelda Barnes think that all started with their ill-fated wedding, but perhaps it was much earlier than that. The fact of the matter is, that after almost twenty years together, everything for them is looking bleak. Dickie’s car dealership—the very one which made his father a fortune, and whose great sales financed the Barneses’ lavish lifestyle—has been going under for a few years. Imelda blames Dickie, as do the kids, Cass and PJ. Surely, if Maurice (Dickie’s father) came back from his retirement in Portugal, and issued them a sizable loan, Dickie would be able to right the ship… But can he, or does he want to?

The family business may be in trouble but there are plenty of other things going on beneath the surface: 1) Cass - consistently among the top of her class, chooses to let loose in the last year of high school, right before her final exams, following in the footsteps of her best friend, Elaine. She now binge-drinks, and does drugs and sex. 2) PJ - is being bullied nonstop, and his closest friends don’t want anything to do with him due to the change of economic circumstances in his family. Feels neglected and is plotting with an online friend to flee home. 3) Imelda - who comes from a broken background (physical violence and thievery as a way of life for the father and siblings), may be on the verge of having an affair. 4) Dickie - his distant past, and his most recent one, are catching up to him.

These four lives, and those of a few other key players’, will collide on an unforgettable night.

Paul Murray plunged right into the story, with no character dump, which, given the length of the book, was very considerate. The story reflects a seasoned writer at the peak of his game. A novel in two parts, with an all-knowing narrator, The Bee Sting is a slow-burn and intricate character study that starts on a light note, almost as a satire, but it gets increasingly darker in tone as the foundations on which the Barnes family was built (tragedy, lies or half-truths, secrets) start to peel off layer by layer.

Murray mixes grammatical structure and narrative styles, each chapter reflecting each personality and view point— messenger texts (PJ), lack of punctuation (Imelda’s), Cass’s narrative in second person, singular, as is occasionally PJ’s, especially in the second part. Towards the end, each character’s narrative becomes more recurrent, briefer, and lacking previously established patterns, lending a thriller-esque quality to the ending.

Despite being a meticulous character study, The Bee Sting has a can’t-look-away-from-this-mess quality that makes for compelling reading. Coincidences towards the end do not detract from an unforgettable, if not entirely fulfilling, climax.

Thanks to the publisher for granting me access to an advanced digital copy via Netgalley.

Paul Murray's "The Bee Sting" was longlisted for the Booker Prize (writing this in August 2013). I can see what attracted the judges as the book is a sprawling narrative about the Barnes family. Murray tells the story from each family member's point of view, and we're constantly told of the same events through their recollections of these events.

This chunkster of a novel works as a dissection of how Dickie, Imelda, PJ and Cass (and those around them) have come to their present dramas/dilemmas. Since Murray has a great eye for sharp bits of dialogue, the narrative is compelling for the most part. I throughly enjoyed it for half the novel. At a certain point, the novel becomes repetitive because the characters talk endlessly about the same problems, and if there's a chance to make a good decision, they will make the wrong one every time. If this were happening in a shorter novel, it would not be as noticeable. At 700 pages, the constant circling, repetition and bad decisions wore me down.

The narrative was harmed by the very long chapters which felt oppressive (the narrative style also changes based on a chapter's protagonist). If the book had been shorter, my book rating would have been higher. With that said, Murray creates a lot of strong moments (there's a particularly disturbing scene towards the end where a person's true identity is revealed) so that I kept going because these scenes were so good that I wanted more of them.

As a side note: There are moments of sexual violence within the book, so I would warn potential readers who might want to prepare themselves for those scenes.