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I recently took a holiday to the Philippines, one of my favorite spots in the whole world. I instantly knew that I wanted to bring an appropriate new novel in physical format to accompany me on my travel journey. I really wanted something unexpected and shocking.
This book needed to fill some big shoes, as my expectations were high. After following a short hiatus from reading regularly, and a spontaneous browse in my local Waterstones on a gloomy Monday, led me to discover my next novel – “The Bee Sting” by Paul Murray, thanks to the help of a very lovely middle-aged shopkeeper.
Described as ‘an instant classic’ by the Washington Post and ‘a tragicomic triumph’ by the Guardian newspaper, I could already feel myself holding my breath even in the very early pages of this staggering 650-page read.
While I usually steer away from large books, I found myself mesmerised by Murray’s ability to write not only extremely complicated and unlikeable characters, which make the book so interesting, but also his ability to switch tone and voice other characters’ inner monologues. He certainly keeps you on the edge from the beginning to the very end.
To summarize, we follow the perspectives of a contemporary Irish family – a hot-headed and lonely teenage girl named Cass, an anxious and lonely teenage boy named PJ, a firm but also lonely mother named Imelda, and a calm but certainly not collected and also lonely father. In essence, they all collectively exuberate the idea of loneliness in unique but almost similar ways, due to an impending disaster that is happening in the background of the story.
Each character has an opportunity to reveal themselves in their previous experiences, as well as their present-day thoughts and dialogue. They are all so distinctive, and you can definitely immerse yourself with their emotions in each story. One even uses a stream of consciousness approach to help us understand how chaotic and how disjointed she feels towards life. She almost romanticises the chaos, in a way that makes you enjoy reading it, because of its realistic nature.
Dua Lipa, a global icon of popular music stated in her Service95 Book Club’s Instagram page that the book ‘builds pace, sucks you in a whirlpool of tension’. She also interviewed the author on her podcast Service95 In Conversation with Paul Murray, which was really interesting in discussing further insights to the author’s thinking process of writing the epic drama.
It found it the most interesting to see how the children in the story view their parents in a one-dimensional view that is predominantly based on immaturity and lack of awareness of their social setting. There is also this contrast to that with how the parents view their children whilst mourning their own mistakes and endeavours on their journey growing up with heavy emphasis on the complexities that you face in adult life.
A really important message that I gathered from this read was that hiding your true identity to suit genderization and class structures can massively impact your future.
Murray also cleverly underlines how there is a sense of fluctuation between the inaccuracies of the stories we tell others in juxtaposition of the stories we tell ourselves. The global climate crisis also makes a nuanced feature which essentially promotes this inevitable destruction to the world, even where their own fragmented world feels bleak.
For me, personally, this book symbolizes the idea that there is always an opportunity to improve. I found myself reflecting on my own past and deciding that the most important lesson I have learned from my twenties so far is that you cannot hide from the harsh truths of reality, no matter how deep you try to bury them.
This was written by our contributing writer, Megan Evans.
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