The Bee Sting was the first book I read this year from the list of books you lot chose for me to read. Therefore, it’s the first book I was properly excited to get into – despite its length. It focuses on the highs and lows, past and present of the Barnes family who live in rural Ireland. With a plot style I usually like and some interesting storytelling techniques, surely this is a book I would like, right?
As I said, The Bee Sting focuses on the lives of the Barnes family who all have their own issues going in their lives, both past and present.
The Bee Sting plot – 4.25/5
The four main characters in The Bee Sting are Imelda, the matriarch who clings to material appearances; Dickie, her husband who battles past traumas and guilt and their children, Cass and PJ who face their own crises of grief and identity. I found Dickie’s story to be the least interesting and either Imelda’s or PJ’s to be the most interesting with PJs being the one I found myself most focusing on whenever we got around to it again.
The plot jumps around quite a bit as we jump between the different characters and their different timelines. Often long and numerous chapters will be dedicated to one character then only have a few dedicated to another before we’re off reading about another. What also left me a tad confused was in the finale of the book, we were jumping around characters like nobody’s business which made the audiobook quite difficult to listen to.
Despite the negative sentiment, I did enjoy The Bee Sting‘s stories, even if it did require a bit of concentration whilst listening to make sure you knew who we were now listening to or reading about.
The Bee Sting characters – 4.25/5
As I mentioned above, there were a couple of characters whose personalities stood out to me as opposed to others. PJ’s and Imedla’s were the two stories I found most interesting. Both involved some sort of severe emotion that therefore I connected to quite a bit. Without spoiling either of the stories, theirs, I think anyway, are the two that most people will find most engaging.
The personalities themselves all varied quite a bit. A lot of the book is written from a narrative point of view, meaning you’re reading about their actions and choices as opposed to being quite as involved in their actual conversations and interactions with other characters, therefore it can be a little hard to gauge their individual personalities quite as well.
The Bee Sting final rating – 4.25/5
I definitely enjoyed The Bee Sting and it’s a book that the more I think about it and the further I get away from having finished, the more I can appreciate both the effect it left on me and the fact I can remember the character’s stories which is testament to their quality. I think this is a book more appreciated physically read as Murray uses grammar playfully with different characters and to express alternating mindsets, which was missed in the audiobook version I listened to. Overall it felt a tad flat to me though and didn’t quite pull me in like some of the other great family and individual story epics epics I’ve read over the past couple of years. I think a lot of people will love this book, but it just wasn’t quite S-tier for me.
