Perhaps you’ve been stung by a bee before. Unless you’re allergic, it was probably a mildly uncomfortable experience which passed quickly and left no mark. In the case of Paul Murray’s Bee Sting however, you probably felt more like you were allergic. And also like you were the bee.

Paul Murray is the author of Skippy Dies, a book that was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010. He is Irish, male, and middle aged (this will be relevant later). His fourth novel, The Bee Sting, released in 2023, is both chaotic and cathartic. At around 650 pages it will take you a while to get through, but it is not on the 2023 Booker Prize shortlist for nothing. The book is about the Barnes family, who are going through a crisis. The financial crash has swept over Ireland and the family garage business is suffering. This leads to other problems within the family to escalate as well: secrets are becoming too hard to hold onto as the family’s lifestyle is crumbling. Cassie, the 18-year-old daughter, is having a hard time focusing on school. Her younger brother PJ is losing friends and scared his family is falling apart. The mother, Imelda, is struggling with the lack of spending money and her relationship with her husband and the kids’ father, Dickie. He is taking a big hit as the breadwinner and owner of the garage, which causes his mental health to decline and even radicalization of sorts.

I will demonstrate below how Murray uses different forms for each family member’s chapters, like no punctuation for Imelda and text messages embedded into the text.

After Cassie kicks off the book, the first thing you will wonder is who Paul Murray is. A teenage girl? Who else could understand the storms that pass through Cassie’s head as her future is decided. Her best friend Elaine is best and the worst, impossible to let go but also something I could only describe as toxic. Cassie is in the awkward middle-phase between childhood and adulthood, realizing that she and her dad do not bond over doing her homework together anymore, and that suddenly everything her Mam says is rage-inducing. On top of that her brother keeps whining and won’t leave her alone. For a moment her life is exactly like Derry Girls when a cool red-haired literature teacher shows up and tells her that she has a talent. Then Elaine, who put the enemy in frenemy, steps in.

PJ is Cassie’s 12-year-old brother. He is scared that his parents don’t like each other anymore. He needs to solve all the family’s problems by himself, because burdening them with anything more could be dangerous for their troubled relationship. His sister will not listen, and why is she studying after the tests anyway? At least he has Ethan to text with.

HEY!!1 IF U COM TO DUBLIN WE CULD GO SEE BLACK DAWN 2GETHER!!!!! : )

Imelda also known as Mam is so beautiful you would not even believe Even her dad would not touch her Even if her brothers had to take her punishments too But it is the most important thing There is not much else outside of keeping up appearances Just being a mother is so difficult especially when the money is so tight Why not just ask the grandfather Maurice for more? He has always loved her too Her beauty but not on her wedding day that’s when she was hidden

Dickie is also all about appearance. Until he is not. He was so close to having his own life, but of course it was not possible after the accident. Or rather accidents? Who knows where it even began. He was always meant to take over the garage, that much he knows. Taking over his dead brother’s girlfriend too, it is the right thing to do. Even if it means suffocating himself in this small town. He will find solace in the woods with the boy, it is good for their relationship.

The Bee Sting is a ball of yarn that seems to consist of many different colors and entanglements, but chapter by chapter it comes undone. By the end all the family’s history, present and even the future to some extent are laid before the reader’s eyes. Still, there is a veil over the future. It is so dark that the release that the book has been building up for all 600 pages might not be as bright as one would have hoped for. “It is for love. You are doing this for love,” are the last words of the novel, not focalized through anyone in particular unlike everything else. From the reader’s perspective the last two sentences do not add anything new, nor do they resolve what happened in the last scene. Murray might suffer from a problem that haunts many authors, that they do not know how to end a story. What is left unsaid by the author will be filled in by the reader and for a book with this volume, an open end comes across as a little unimaginative.

But I do not want to be too harsh. The Bee Sting has so many redeeming qualities, that the ending is still somehow cathartic. The impending doom that has shadowed the family from before it even was a family keeps shadowing the end too. The end is not really an end, because there can’t be one. Murphy’s law turns into Murray’s law as he makes sure to put the characters through it all. Just when you think that surely it can’t get any worse, it does. This is where the comedy is found, lurking around the edges of the tragedy: if all secrets were revealed, there would be so much less drama. But they are doing it, keeping their secrets, out of love. The absurd realism of the situation really makes The Bee Sting sting. If you have ever spent time studying psychology, you know the character’s dynamic sadly makes sense. If you have ever spent time in a dysfunctional family, you know it makes total sense. And I would argue that we all have.

The Bee Sting is dramatic fiction. More specifically, it is Irish dramatic fiction, with elements of superstition and the supernatural embedded into it. As Justine Jordan wrote in her review for The Guardian: “The Bee Sting draws on Irish folklore about a traveler taken in by fairy folk to their great hall of riches under the hill, only to wake many years later in a cold, unfamiliar world where everything they knew and loved has passed away”. The family’s homeplace is indeed called “Goldenhill” and up until the events of the book, they have been successful and quite satisfied.

Other reviews, professional and non-professional, have pointed out that her chapters lack punctuation because she is uneducated. In this case her superstition could also be explained away simply by her lack of education, but I would like to propose a different interpretation. Often women in Irish texts are interpreted to be images of Ireland, as the damsel in distress imprisoned in a colonial tower. This could also apply to Imelda and how her own and then Dickie’s father control her life, emotionally and financially. However, she has a safe haven in Rose, a witchy psychic, who gives her chapters a new depth. Rose lives in a cottage removed from the rest of the village. She can see the future and tries to save Imelda from it. Other people, especially the men in Imelda’s life do not trust or care for Rose much and in the end, it is also up to the reader to decide whether Rose’s abilities are real or a bunch of lucky coincidences. Of course, to many believing in psychics or the superstitious is something only an uneducated person like Imelda could fall for, but the truth is that Rose is never wrong. Even if many modern Irishmen do not identify as superstitious, the legacy of the folklore and traditions are still present. Imelda is the embodiment of these persistent remains of the faery folk, with her golden hair, otherworldly beauty, and superstition. At the same time, she is the post-financial crash Ireland. A little chaotic, confusing, and hung up on money but still by no means unlovable or lost.

As for the form of Imelda’s chapters, in my opinion they lack punctuation because she is either in an active state of emotional turbulence or thinking back to a memory. How many could say that their thoughts are clear and organized when they constantly feel like they are reaching their breaking point? How many could say the same about their memories from 20 years ago? Memories tend to be fuzzy and unclear around the edges, and so are her sentences, especially when it involves dialogue: “Mammy said she was vain Keep looking in that mirror and the Devil will appear That was what she said”.

Now to make a roundtrip to the beginning of this review, I want to address my experience as the reader and why I think reading The Bee Sting isakin to being a bee who is allergic to bee stings that then gets stung. As someone who carries an EpiPen with me because of severe allergies, I know what it is like. Not being able to breathe properly, not having any feeling in your legs. I’ve also been stung by a bee. I saw how he lost his stinger and flew off into a corner to curl up into his death. It was brutal, and it seemed so pointless to me. I was not going to harm the bee that stung me. But he did not know that. Out of love for his colony he stung me, just like the characters in The Bee Sting keep hurting and pushing each other to the breaking point when they meant to protect each other. They do not see each other’s secrets or lives but we as the readers do. We are the bee because we can relate to them, see why they do what they do, but we might also find ourselves highly allergic to what we learn about the Barnes family. That is how strong The Bee Sting can be.