When the economic crash came to Ireland in 2008, things got tough. Businesses collapsed, building projects were left to rot, people cracked under the pressure. But the economic part is not the worst. Money can be figured out. It’s the other, non-tangible costs of the fluid way of being that are the hardest.
Paul Murray’s novel The Bee Sting tells about the costs of fluidity that lie far outside of the economic realm. The 650-page book is so well-constructed that I didn’t figure out what the author was driving at and how everything was going to come together into a coherent message until the last pages. I was worried to the very end Murray wasn’t going to pull it off but he did, and I’m majorly impressed. Reader zinemin who recommended the novel gets my deepest gratitude. I’ve waited for a real, serious anti-neoliberal novel in English for years, and finally it came. Ireland rules.
The novel tells about the Barnes family, mom, dad, an 18-year-old daughter, and a 12-year-old son. Mom, dad, and daughter are so completely absorbed in the burning issue of whom to bed that they don’t notice that everything is collapsing around them. With the greatest patience and humor, Murray shows what it looks like when people turn sex into an idol and worship at its altar. As mother, father, and sister stumble around in their sexual haze, predators, wokesters, crooks, and pedophiles swarm, eager to feast on the carrion of a rotting family.
Family, which is the Great Unchosen, is the only hope of survival amidst the battering flows of uncertainty. Will the Barneses figure this out in time? Will we? Or are we going to sacrifice what matters to our fascination with chasing after freedom and choices?
Murray smashes us right against these crucial questions, the most important ones we can ask ourselves. Is duty more important than feeding our incessant wants? What is more likely to bring happiness and peace, doing what’s right or following our whims? As he leads us towards the answers, Murray pokes fun at woke gender-fluid brats, climate whisperers, pretentious professors, and silly college girls who buy into leftist fads. He also offers a nuanced and brave depiction of homosexuality, both male and female.
Often an author knows how to write well but has absolutely nothing to say. Joyce Maynard is a great example. But Murray not only writes brilliantly, he has tons to say about stuff that really matters. He’s a major talent, and I’m shaking with joy that I found this author.
Clarissa's Blog 
I’m so happy you liked it! 🙂
So from your post I get the impression that you find the ending necessary. I’d love to hear more why. I was very upset about the ending and thought it did not fit the narrative arc.
Towards the end, it seemed that parents and sister were finally slowly getting to their senses. The father thinking about how he felt his daughter move for the first time etc. Why were they punished by this terrible ending? Why did the children not get a chance to live their own life? They have already suffered enough because of the horrible mistake that their parents made by marrying each other. I understand that it ties in neatly with the first sentence of the novel, but for me the novel would have needed a more hopeful ending. At least for the children.
And I also really enjoyed the rant about identity politics distracting people from more important issues like climate change — I read this differently, I think that the author takes climate change very seriously but finds identity politics ridiculous. A position I agree with.
Besides the ending, the part that was hardest for me to read is how the sister pushed away her brother at this party… that was so painful. You’re right, and I did not really see this, that it is about people constantly prioritizing their desires over their love for their family. However, strangely the biggest mistake at the core of the novel is two people marrying each other out of some mix of duty and grief instead of actual desire for each other, so at that point, they should have followed their actual desires more, not less…
The novel really goes where it hurts and I admire the author for this!
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It’s an open ending. I don’t think anybody dies. But it’s true that we don’t know for sure. It’s up to us to decide whether we choose life and togetherness or sitting alone in the woods and destroying others to protect our tawdry sex secrets. But then again, maybe it is too late for us to change and step away from that model.
I don’t think that the parents’ marriage was a mistake. It created PJ, who is by far the only attractive character in the book. PJ’s innocence and sweetness is the future. And Imelda and Dickie clearly love each other.
As for Willie’s speech, the most salient thing about him is that he can argue any point passionately without believing it and that he invents facts to manipulate his listeners. A pretty big deal was made out of this for it not to matter.
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Have you read his novel “Skippy Dies”? Is it good too?
It’s the only novel of his at the library.
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No, I only read this one.
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“so completely absorbed in the burning issue of whom to bed”
What happened to Ireland? Traditionally one of the most sexually conservative countries in Europe if not the world (if old ethnographies of Irish village life are to be believed)….
The Irish series ‘The Dry’ which I mentioned before is also full of dysfunctional sexual choices and behavior… at least a lot of it is shown as awkward and unfulfilling and nasty (which doesn’t seem to discourage the characters pursuit of…. whatever it is they think they’re going to get).
2008 and austerity seems to have unleashed demons…. which was probably the whole point.
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