Many reviews for Paul Murray’s 600 page epic The Bee Sting have compared the complex and thoughtful portrait of a family on the brink of ruin to a Jonathan Franzen novel set in the Irish countryside rather than middle America. The comparison is apt, throughout the novel Murray takes on the voice of each member of the Barnes family, all of whom are dealing with their own demons and shifting expectations for their lives.
Dickie, the patriarch, has been forced by the troubles of the 2008 financial crisis to close his auto garage, what was once a lucrative family business — while his wife Imelda, a woman revered in the community for her beauty, is struggling to come to terms with the loss of her glamorous image. Their kids — teenage Cass who has neglected to study for finals in favor of spending nights at bars with her best friend and a series of sketchy men, and PJ, who spends his time chatting online with strangers about video games — also struggle with the sudden loss of prestige and the shame that comes with economic strife.
Dickie deals with his issues by retreating into the woods to build an apocalypse-proof bunker, while Imelda begins selling her possessions online, and the each of the kids watches their friends go on vacations or get presents that are no longer within their reach. The novel is a heartbreaking meditation on a family of people who could solve many of their problems by simply reaching out and asking for help or a listening ear. But as Murray reveals, the issues of the Barnes family trace back far before the closure of the garage: in flashbacks to Dickie’s college days Murray reveals a traumatic incident that is the locus of his deep well of shame, and flashbacks to Imelda’s youth living in poverty with her abusive father offer some explanation as to why each character has these deep-seated emotional blockages that prevent them from expressing themselves in a healthy way.
The novel also traces back to the great romance of Imelda’s life, not with Dickie but with his brother Frank, who died tragically before he could marry Imelda. The novel takes surprising turns as each character goes deeper and deeper down a path that almost feels predestined — unraveled by Murray with masterful precision and emotional rigor. Laying the plot elements bare, the novel is quite bleak, but Murray manages to suffuse his narrative with a bright wit and a true joy that comes with self-discovery. He writes about these moments of everyday tenderness and love with such a stunning emotional clarity — that manages to feel both natural and unsentimental.
The Bee Sting is formally inventive in the way that is varies in tone and style between narrators, but what separates it from many other modern novels is the immersive world-building of the many selves that is portrays. This is a novel that tackles selfhood and introspection unlike any that I’ve read before, and while the reader may feel compelled to throw the book against the wall as the characters make increasingly destructive decisions, Murray has managed to write a complex novel about broken people that still leaves room for hope and optimism for a brighter future that can only come to pass when total love and acceptance are the default.