The Bee Sting

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize

From the author of Skippy Dies comes Paul Murray's The Bee Sting, an irresistibly funny, wise, and thought-provoking tour de force about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person when the world is falling apart.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under--but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he's on the brink of running away.

If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda's wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man?

The Bee Sting, Paul Murray's exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de force: a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.

Author: Paul Murray
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 08/15/2023
Pages: 656
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.80lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.40w x 1.90d
ISBN: 9780374600303
Award: Man Booker Prize - Nominee
Award: Kirkus Prize - Finalist

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 03/01/2023 pg. 4
Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2023
Booklist 05/15/2023 pg. 16
Publishers Weekly 06/19/2023
Library Journal 07/01/2023 pg. 64
Shelf Awareness 08/25/2023

About the Author
Paul Murray was born in 1975 in Dublin. He is the author of several novels, including An Evening of Long Goodbyes, which was short-listed for the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies (2013) was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Mark and the Void (2015) was joint winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize, and named one of Time's Top 10 Fiction Books of the year.