Book Review: The Bee Sting

The Bee Sting
by Paul Murray
Review by Bel

Click here to listen to Bel review The Bee Sting on RDU 98.5FM, or read the garbled transcript here:

Do you ever have those recurring dreams where you discover a room in your house that you didn’t know was there, but discovering it changes everything?? I have those all the time and that’s what this book reminds me of because you think you know what it’s about, the family and their business problems and how it effects them all differently, but then the point of view changes to another family member and we realise oh no, this novel is actually about something else entirely! There’s another whole novel in here that I never even knew about! And that’s what I found so incredible about this book – that it’s effectively four novels in one – each member of the Barnes family is a novel in itself. And that’s what life is like right? Families are made up of individual novels. We’re all the main character in our own lives. And when you mush your novel into someone else’s, things get complicated fast.

Now I have to issue a warning with this book – there are some sections that are written entirely without punctuation, which is a deal-breaker for some readers, and fair enough, it did take me a little while to get my head around the style, but once you’ve read a few pages of that section, it starts to flow beautifully. And because they’re Irish, you can hear the lilt and that somehow made it much easier for me. And I was so invested in the characters by that point, and where the story was going that I was willing to stumble for a bit while I found my feet, and I’m so glad I did.

This is a funny, utterly heartbreaking and incredibly well crafted novel. Full of tremendously flawed characters that are just so loveable, and have such depth and strength of voice. Oh I miss them all!