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A review by richardrbecker
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Can there be too much of a good thing? Paul Murray is a master storyteller. So many times I was swept up in the tiny moments that framed the lives of his Irish family after the financial crash of 2008 As we learn more about the Barnes family we discover that their problems are rooted in something more than the outside world The real challenges they face come from within And I'll share more about that in a moment
So how can there be too much of it? It's not so much the size of the book that becomes troublesome as much as the lack of punctuation Paul Murray writes without quotation marks like many Irish writers He then takes it a step more while writing from the perspective of Imelda All of her sections are stream-of-consciousness and like punctuation It's symbolic of her lack of formal education and also the unstructured nature of life.
The decision makes sense until it doesn't Whereas most stream-of-consciousness speeds readers along Imelda makes reading sluggish enough I dreaded her bits despite how important they are She married into the Barnes family and thought she had escaped the poverty of her youth Early on it wasn't her husband that she intended to marry She was in love with his brother Frank and would have married him had he not died prematurely
Like the bee that stings Imelda on her wedding day it is clear that there will always be trouble with her union to Dickie He runs the family garage franchise and car dealership that is suffering grave financial challenges But the real challenge is that Dickie might have been better off coming out rather than being subjected to blackmail
Although the family's story is interdependent, it is when Murray turns to the children's point of view that he is most effective I felt a kinship with PJ as he tries to navigate out of being blackmailed by a bully who accuses PJ's Dad of ripping off his mom at the garage At 12 PJ often appears to be the most venerable, spending many of his days texting a stranger about running away and being largely neglected by sister and father despite needing their attention His older sister Cass is also struggling and drinking her way through finals before escaping to college during the crisis She also has a love-lust-hate relationship with her best friend And we wonder what lesson she might learn from it
Murray does a brilliant job of capturing all of their personal dramas — both hopes and despairs And I would have rated it five stars if not for the fact that the punctuation and later indentation of every line draw so much attention to itself that it is difficult to remain lost in the story Maybe other readers will feel differently Or perhaps I would have felt differently grabbing the audiobook over the printed page But it is what it is much like this review sans punctuation Still, I'm glad I read it
So how can there be too much of it? It's not so much the size of the book that becomes troublesome as much as the lack of punctuation Paul Murray writes without quotation marks like many Irish writers He then takes it a step more while writing from the perspective of Imelda All of her sections are stream-of-consciousness and like punctuation It's symbolic of her lack of formal education and also the unstructured nature of life.
The decision makes sense until it doesn't Whereas most stream-of-consciousness speeds readers along Imelda makes reading sluggish enough I dreaded her bits despite how important they are She married into the Barnes family and thought she had escaped the poverty of her youth Early on it wasn't her husband that she intended to marry She was in love with his brother Frank and would have married him had he not died prematurely
Like the bee that stings Imelda on her wedding day it is clear that there will always be trouble with her union to Dickie He runs the family garage franchise and car dealership that is suffering grave financial challenges But the real challenge is that Dickie might have been better off coming out rather than being subjected to blackmail
Although the family's story is interdependent, it is when Murray turns to the children's point of view that he is most effective I felt a kinship with PJ as he tries to navigate out of being blackmailed by a bully who accuses PJ's Dad of ripping off his mom at the garage At 12 PJ often appears to be the most venerable, spending many of his days texting a stranger about running away and being largely neglected by sister and father despite needing their attention His older sister Cass is also struggling and drinking her way through finals before escaping to college during the crisis She also has a love-lust-hate relationship with her best friend And we wonder what lesson she might learn from it
Murray does a brilliant job of capturing all of their personal dramas — both hopes and despairs And I would have rated it five stars if not for the fact that the punctuation and later indentation of every line draw so much attention to itself that it is difficult to remain lost in the story Maybe other readers will feel differently Or perhaps I would have felt differently grabbing the audiobook over the printed page But it is what it is much like this review sans punctuation Still, I'm glad I read it