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.
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.
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1 books in catalog
Contemporary comic fiction and tragicomedy merge in expansive novels that dissect Irish society, institutional failure, and family dynamics. Irish author Paul Murray gained critical recognition with his tragicomic narrative style, exemplified by the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Bee Sting and the celebrated boarding school epic Skippy Dies.
Born in Dublin in 1975, Murray grew up in Killiney, Ireland, and later studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin. He went on to complete a Master of Arts in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where he drafted his debut novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes. Released in 2003, the book was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. He followed this success with his 2010 novel Skippy Dies, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and became a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2015, Murray published The Mark and the Void, an exploration of international finance that won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Expanding into screenwriting, he wrote the script for the 2018 feature film Metal Heart, directed by Hugh O'Conor, before returning to long-form fiction with The Bee Sting in 2023.
Murray is best known for combining sharp satirical humor with deep emotional vulnerability and structural ambition. His works frequently feature multiple narrative perspectives, shifting viewpoints, and a balance between absurd comedic situations and poignant personal tragedy. Central themes in his fiction include the fallout of economic collapse, the anxieties of adolescence and adulthood, environmental dread, and the complex bonds within failing institutions or troubled family units.
1 books in catalog
Contemporary comic fiction and tragicomedy merge in expansive novels that dissect Irish society, institutional failure, and family dynamics. Irish author Paul Murray gained critical recognition with his tragicomic narrative style, exemplified by the Booker Prize-shortlisted novel The Bee Sting and the celebrated boarding school epic Skippy Dies.
Born in Dublin in 1975, Murray grew up in Killiney, Ireland, and later studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin. He went on to complete a Master of Arts in creative writing at the University of East Anglia, where he drafted his debut novel, An Evening of Long Goodbyes. Released in 2003, the book was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. He followed this success with his 2010 novel Skippy Dies, which was longlisted for the Booker Prize and became a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2015, Murray published The Mark and the Void, an exploration of international finance that won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Expanding into screenwriting, he wrote the script for the 2018 feature film Metal Heart, directed by Hugh O'Conor, before returning to long-form fiction with The Bee Sting in 2023.
Murray is best known for combining sharp satirical humor with deep emotional vulnerability and structural ambition. His works frequently feature multiple narrative perspectives, shifting viewpoints, and a balance between absurd comedic situations and poignant personal tragedy. Central themes in his fiction include the fallout of economic collapse, the anxieties of adolescence and adulthood, environmental dread, and the complex bonds within failing institutions or troubled family units.
