- Posted byVicki James
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?
Introduction to the author and book
PAUL MURRAY was born in Dublin in 1975, the son of a professor of Anglo-Irish Drama at University College Dublin and a teacher. Murray attended Blackrock College in south Dublin, an experience that would later provide the basis for the school in his novel Skippy Dies.
He studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and subsequently completed his master’s in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. He also spent time in Barcelona, as an English teacher, a time he did not enjoy, describing it as, “a brief and unhappy stint teaching English to a Catalan businessman, who pointed out many faults in my grammar I had not known about hitherto”. His first novel An Evening of Long Goodbyes (published in 2003) was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Mark and the Void won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
The Bee Sting (2023) is ‘a 650-page slab of compulsive high-grade entertainment’, a sharply written family soap opera that oozes pathos while being very funny to boot. Set after the 2008 crash but also moving four decades into the past, the story toggles between the perspectives of husband and wife, Dickie and Imelda.
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.
WINNER OF THE NERO BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2023
WINNER OF AN POST IRISH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WRITERS’ PRIZE FOR FICTION 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE KERRY GROUP NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2024
ONE OF SARAH JESSICA PARKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
Book of the Year 2023 according to New York Times, New Yorker, The Sunday Times, The Economist, Observer, Guardian, Washington Post, Lit Hub, TIME magazine, Irish Times, The Oldie, Daily Mail, i Paper, Independent, The Standard, The Times, Kirkus, Daily Express, City A.M.
‘A tragicomic triumph. You won’t read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year’ Guardian
‘It’s a thing of beauty, a novel that will fill your heart’ Observer
This epic, many-layered tragicomedy of an Irish family in crisis is as pleasurable to read as it is emotionally devastating. Guardian (‘Summer Stories’)
Immersive, brilliantly structured, beautifully written, so dense yet so compelling, [and] as laugh-out-loud funny as it is deeply disturbing. I didn’t see the plot twists coming. And they keep on coming. And coming again … The Spectator (Ian Samson)
‘Generous, immersive, sharp-witted and devastating … a triumph’ Financial Times
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. Observer (Anthony Cummins)
One of the best novels of the year …. a compelling, thought-provoking tragic-comic family drama, told in multiple voices, and set in Ireland. The characters, of all ages, are memorable and convincing, the plot is a cracker and it will keep you gripped, amused and provoked throughout 656 brilliant pages. Independent, ‘Best Books of 2023’
A wonderful saga … [The Bee Sting] brilliantly explores how our self-deceptions ultimately catch up with us, and is at once hilarious and heartbreaking. Booker Prize Judges
What do you think of this novel?
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Vicki James & Helen Sinclair
The next book for October 24 will be …
Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny (366 pages, easy read)
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