THE BEE STING BY PAUL MURRAY
Although it missed out on winning the Booker Prize (a decision which many considered controversial), The Bee Sting is a tragicomic masterpiece. It follows the declining fortunes of the Barnes family, once one of the wealthiest in their small town in Ireland, now facing a humiliating loss in status and living standards as the dad’s car dealership starts to go under. The novel is split into sections told from the perspective of each family member. There’s Cass, the binge-drinking teenage daughter who is stuck under the shadow of her cruel, indifferent best friend. Her younger brother, the 12-year-old PJ, is a shy, awkward anorak who is obsessed with video games and facts about zoology, and who may or may not be getting groomed online by a neo-Nazi paedophile.
We first meet the parents from the viewpoint of their teenage children, and they come across like caricatures: Imelda is beautiful but shallow, materialistic and vapid, while Dickie just seems like a hapless loser. But as the novel progresses, we learn the tragic story of how the pair ended up together and the terrible, but sympathetic, mistakes they’ve both made, at which point they became imbued with real depth – I almost felt guilty for scoffing at them in earlier chapters. The Bee Sting is wise, laugh-out-loud funny and heartbreakingly sad, and Murray is one of the liveliest prose stylists at work today. Personally, this was my favourite book of the year. (James Greig)
