‘The Bee Sting’ by Paul Murray      (2023) – 643 pages

In 2010, Paul Murray published the novel ‘Skippy Dies’. All of the reviews that I read at that time were very positive, and it went on to win numerous awards. The novel was said to be both comic and tragic at the same time, in other words right up my alley.

Ordinarily I would have been quick to get a copy of ‘Skippy Dies’ and read it. However there was one problem. ‘Skippy Dies’ was 672 pages long. How in the world was I going to read a 672-page novel and keep my book blog site active at the same time?

I kept postponing and postponing reading ‘Skippy Dies’. And at the same time, the reputation of ‘Skippy Dies’ seemed to grow as the years went by.

I kept kicking myself for not having read ‘Skippy Dies’.

In the meantime Paul Murray published another novel, ‘The Mark and the Void’, which did not create quite as much of a stir as ‘Skippy Dies’.

Now in 2023 Paul Murray has published another novel, ‘The Bee Sting’, and again this time the reviews are uniformly superlative. It’s been longlisted for the Booker Prize and so on.

But ‘The Bee Sting’ is again over 600 pages. However this time I’m not going to make the same mistake as I did with ‘Skippy Dies’. I began reading ‘The Bee Sting’ four days ago, and I am already to page 260 which means I’m already over 40% done with the novel.

This time Paul Murray has written an Irish family drama and not in a humorous vein. There are scenes of terrible menace in this novel. The opening quote is quite acute in capturing the mood of ‘The Bee Sting’:

“Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.” – John Donne

‘The Bee Sting’ is working out to be a quite immersive read for this reader who is fully engaged in the lives of these four family members.

Stay tuned for Part II of ‘The Bee Sting’, my final review of the novel, which will appear after I complete the novel. In the meantime I will be publishing a couple of reviews of other novels I’ve recently read.