Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, Paul Murray’s novel, The Bee Sting, is 643 pages of pure reading pleasure.
It tells the story of the Barnes, a modern-day Irish family whose luck has turned. For teenage daughter Cass, the decline began with the closing of her father’s car showroom. For PJ, the younger child, it was his parents’ fighting. For Imelda, their mother, the downturn set in around the time of her wedding, the day of the bee sting. For Dickie, the father, the event which ended his days at university marked the beginning of his change of fortune.
In The Bee Sting, Murray employed an unusual and highly effective structure. The four family members are given an exclusive opening section, each extending to close to 100 pages. These comprehensive sections are written in close third person.
Cass is the first. She is a teenager whose life becomes tainted by the failure of her father’s business. Her friendship with schoolmate Elaine, her experiences and worries in the family and at school, and the hint of a different father combine to intrigue the reader. A similarly fascinating account of her brother follows. We are then introduced to Imelda Barnes, a great beauty. Finally, Dickie is revealed in all his troubled complexity.
Each section is told through that character’s eyes, and we become accustomed to their way of thinking and observing the world through the events in their lives and the style of writing. PJ’s section, for example, is filled with reference to video games and contains many abbreviated text exchanges. In Imelda’s, sentence follows sentence without the use of full-stops, echoing her tumbling thoughts.
As the novel progresses, Murray reveals more about each character as the sections devoted to each family member become progressively shorter with the rising tension. Eventually, Murray speaks directly to each character in second person narrative, bringing the reader even closer to each actor. The final section includes the viewpoints of them all for the first time, in short one- or two-sentence bursts.
Paul Murray is a great storyteller and observer of people. As well as the central story of the Barnes family, his novel provides insights into contemporary global concerns, life in Ireland, and secondary characters all of which delight and amuse. The Bee Sting is pure entertainment from a writer who is a master of his craft.
You can listen to this post here:
