The Bee Sting

What do the Irish put in their water? A couple of weeks ago I raved about Paul Lynch’s novel “Prophet Song”, and now Paul Murray, also Irish, comes up with “The Bee Sting”, also deservedly on the Booker shortlist, but completely different.

Superficially, it’s a classic family novel - like Middlemarch, like The Corrections. It’s over five hundred pages, and it follows each of the four members of a family, gradually unpeeling the layers of the family onion. But it’s also totally modern, exploring in turn, and (to me at least) with total conviction, the inner lives of each of the family members - male and female, young and old. There’s switches and dark secrets, and a complicated plot, but I’ve found it a pleasure to read, and now I’ve finished there’s the painful ache left by a stunning book. I may well reread it in the future, but never again will I discover it for the first time.