Bee stings

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is failing and while his wife is frantically selling her jewellery on eBay, he’s busy building a bunker in the woods. Meanwhile, their daughter, Cass, is battling all the demons of adolescence, and her younger brother is falling into the black hole of the internet…

Where did it all go wrong? How do you deal with hardships whose causes lie deep in the past? How long will it be before the Barnes family can admit the truth? And if the story has already been written, is there still any chance of a happy ending?

The Bee Sting is the magnum opus of contemporary Irish writer Paul Murray. With a humorous and sarcastic tone, the author explores themes such as identity crisis and disillusionment, while also masterfully capturing the fragility and subtlety of family relationships, love, loss, and the search for hope in dark times. The narrative, which at first flows at the pace of dripping honey, relentlessly leads us to a gripping finale thanks to the alternating narrative voices and perspectives. A bee sting is not only painful but also self-destructive.