The Bee Sting – Paul Murray

The Barnes family are, to all appearances, successful, one of the leading families in the Irish town where they reside. Dickie Barnes runs the local car dealership, taken over from his father. Imelda, his wife, was the town beauty when they married and still has the looks, the clothes, and the bearing to attract admiring glances. Daughter, Cassandra (Cass), is doing well at school, destined (with best friend Elaine) for Trinity College Dublin. Son, PJ, is younger and happy just to amass scientific facts and play his computer games.

But the Barnes business has entered the choppy waters of the crashing Irish economy and is about to hit the rocks. The narrative passes through the four points of view in satisfyingly meaty sections.

Cass gets wind that Dad’s business is ‘slowing down’ and that belts need tightening, not what she wants to hear ahead of university. It’s another insecurity piled on top of her own teenage angst. She turns to parties, drink, boys.

The crash affects PJ too as, targeted by school bullies, he needs cash to buy them off, but the bank of mum and dad is dry. Desperate measures need to be considered.

Imelda is reduced to selling off her extensive wardrobe and accumulated household luxuries to maintain her lifestyle and place in the local ladies’ society. Dickie is to blame of course, and marital relations are non-existent. An attractive woman, neglected, is prey to temptation.

Finally, Dickie, at a loss, waiting for an upturn, haunted by a past that is waiting to re-emerge, and fearful of a future where his own problems become conflated with potential societal breakdown. Building a bunker to hole up in seems a good option.

The four perspectives work well, and the narrative weaves the developing crises with the back story of Dickie and Imelda, which increasingly contextualises the present. A final section combines the four voices in a ratatat crescendo and a helter-skelter dash for the line as storylines merge in a thunderous (literally, it takes place in a thunderstorm) climax.

A good, compulsive, insightful read, but two reservations. Murray chooses to eschew some punctuation conventions, like speech marks (an increasingly common affectation) and, in one narrative, full stops! And he ends with a bit of a tease, a disappointment after the 650-page build-up.