The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

Did you smash it

I don’t read that much fiction. I didn’t expect to be affected by this as much as I was.

I thought this was an incredibly well told story. I hope it gets made into a movie or mini series.

am I just unaware that a lot of fiction is this good or is this of rare quality?

Hermy

Yes, sometimes fiction really is that good but other times a book just hits you that way though the general consensus may not be so favourable towards it.

A while back someone posted here raving about Elana Ferrante's Neapolitan Quartet. Based on their comments I tried reading My Brilliant Friend, the first in the series, but I didn't like it at all and gave up after a couple of chapters.

I recently read Ian McEwan's Lessons and I can honestly say it's one of the finest novels I've ever read. Yet bizarrely many compare it with John Boyne's The Heart's Invisible Furies and consider the latter a superior book.

I'll add The Bee Sting to my reading list though I did try Skippy Dies some years ago and that was another I gave up on after only a few chapters so who knows what I'll make of this one.

rogber

I agree, fiction can be amazing but it's very subjective. Even works by the same author. I adore Foster by Claire Keegan, but really disliked Small Things Like These, her "novel" that was shortlisted for the Booker last year and was a huge hit.

Am curious about Bee Sting but wary about the length. Does any novel really need to be 650 pages?

Shelga

I just finished the Bee Sting last night. It took me about 3 months to finish it and I nearly gave up at about 400 pages. I really don’t get the hype. Murray is very good with his observational prose in parts but it’s bloated and boring for lots of it. Absolutely hated how the Imelda character’s parts had no punctuation- pretentious nonsense.

I didn’t like the ending either.

cheese sandwich

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121279511#Comment_121279511

Agree with you on Lessons, I thought it was superb and probably didn’t get the recognition it deserved

Quiet Achiever

Well i loved it.

Characters were all brilliant and you got to know them very well. It was all "show, don't tell" with regard to their character formation, which added to the length, but for me at least the book had a brilliant flow which made it very readable.

limnam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121422835#Comment_121422835

Depends. A lot of people say War and Peace is about 1000 pages too short.

I don't really understand why people get hung up on the length of a book.

Unless it's an issue with the physical weight of the book. What difference does it make?

rogber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121632971#Comment_121632971

Simple matter of time investment. The bigger the book, the more annoying if it turns out to be a waste of time.

And I don't think I ever read a 600 page book that wouldn't have benefitted from bring shortened.

Never heard anyone say War and Peace should have been longer.

On the other hand sooner an excellent 600 page book than 3 poor 200 page ones

limnam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121635949#Comment_121635949

You should be able to determine if a book is a "waste of time" long before 600 pages.

Maybe you have very poor book selection ?

No? How about Anton Chekhov? but I think you're probably missing the point. Even with War and Peace as long as it is. It only scratches the surface of what ultimately the book is about. Examining the complexities of life and the human condition and when it's written that well. It's seems bizarre someone who enjoys reading would want something so good to be shortened.

Trigger Happy

The Bee Sting is the best thing I have read in the last couple of years. We deserved of its booker shortlisting. Yes, its 650 pages long but written in very accessible language which make it easier to read faster for me.

I would have liked a bit more certainty at the end of the book though...kinda left me wondering.

Quiet Achiever

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121637674#Comment_121637674

I read an analysis as i can be crap at figuring out what something is clearly getting at.

Spoiler: the last line is "grey squirrel" - it harks back to a game Dicky used to play with the kids referred to in one if the opening chapters

Hermy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121632971#Comment_121632971

It's makes a massive difference if your preference is for shorter books.

Also, many long novels are unnecessarily long - much of Stephen King's output for instance - and you end up getting bogged down in endless reams of pointless prose which is no readers idea of fun.

limnam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121639945#Comment_121639945

If you've a preference for shorter books it's easy.

Avoid all the long ones....

phatkev

Picked this up at the weekend, but the print I got seems to be littered with punctuation errors. No full stops, no commas, random capitalised words, which all make it very difficult to read/follow for me. Thought I may have just downloaded the version and that has the same issues. Has anybody else noticed this, seems to run from around page 160 into the 300s?

Quiet Achiever

I know that section annoyed a lot of people, and it is often the kind of thing that annoys me, but i found it was really effective at getting inside the pace of Imelda's mind.

It was deliberate.

phatkev

Ah ok, I feel as though I'm going to have to abandon ship on this one. My brain just doesnt want to cooperate😅

Tombo2001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121635949#Comment_121635949

Wolf Hall was nearly 700 pages, and if it had been longer I would have happily kept reading.

rogber

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121637657#Comment_121637657

Thanks for the condescending suggestions. I think my book choices are generally quite good but never read a 600+ page book that wouldn't have benefitted from trimming.

And actually Chekhov, who I love, said much the same: almost every book he read seemed to him too long. He was a master of concision.

However people have different preferences, some enjoy sprawling epics, and that's fine too

PeaSea

Yes there is a lot of good modern literature around, especially Irish. I have recently started to read a lot again after 30-40 years. By a lot I mean around 20 novels a year for the last 3 or 4 years, so that's a lot to me anyway. If you liked The Bee Sting try Paul Lynch, Emma Donoghue, Donal Ryan and Oisin Fagan. For non Irish you might like Yann Martel, Emily Mandel or Anthony Doerr.

I have two rules, don't give up before 100 pages (some books I really enjoyed in the end I had no connection with at all 50 pages in) and if you don't like a book by an author, try another one by the same (I really don't like a couple of Donal Ryan's books but others of his are among my favourites).

limnam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121740576#Comment_121740576

I was just pointing out Chekhov as you said you never heard anyone say War and Peace was too short.

He did.

Chocolatier

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121422835#Comment_121422835

I really disliked Small Things Like These as well. A load of hokum with such dreary characters. It was meant to be set in the mid-80s, but was more reflective of priest-ridden Ireland of the 50s. The idea that the nuns would be able to prevent your kids going to the local school if you stepped out of line is laughable. It felt as if it was written by someone who didn't actually live in Ireland.

Quiet Achiever

I really enjoyed it but agree that the era felt quite off to me

cheese sandwich

I enjoyed Small Things Like These. I was a kid in the 1980s so I’m not best placed to judge but I don’t remember it being as repressive and bleak as the book suggests. There seems to be a bit of a current theme of fiction overegging the supposed authority of the Church in more recent decades - the BBC showed a miniseries recently about Magdalen Laundries which apparently portrayed women being seized against their will in the 90s, which is patently nonsense.

hoodie6029

I enjoyed Dickie and Cass’s stories in Bee Sting. I thought that they were brilliant.
But I could have done without the rest. I honestly struggled to find the motivation to finish. To me, all the other’s stories seemed tacked on. We didn’t need the story of Imelda and Frank and Imelda’s family history.
PJ’s story of bring targeted by a cartoonish bully went nowhere and adding nothing to the story.
As a whole, I don’t think it all gelled together. A much more focused book would have been better.

Ceist_Beag

I thought the Bee Sting was a superb book, albeit quite a sad story ultimately. For me all of the individual stories did gel really well. PJ's story regarding the bully was very much tied in to Dickie's garage and the theft and shoddy workmanship going on there. The characters were very real and flawed and the way it was written really worked for me. One of the better books I've ready in the past few years. I'll have to check out Ian McEwan's Lessons at some point based on a post on here.

boardise

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121632971#Comment_121632971

As a reader of fiction myself I would argue against overly long novels and I can see why some/many readers resent them. Life has changed to the fast lane . Look at the competition these days for people 's time . There's competition to reading from radio , tv , computers , cinemas , sports , gyms , night courses , functions , eating out etc. Not much of this existed in the 19th century -or even before the mid 20th .

I think any author should be able to say anything useful they have to say in 250/300 pages. It's a discipline I wish they would cultivate. ( probably save paper too ? )

Quiet Achiever

I typically agree with regard to overly long novels, and it is why i struggle with Stephen King books lamenting that he is too famous and successful to let an editor tell him to cut his book in half to let the story out.

But in the case of The Bee Sting, i just loved it end to end and it flowed along beautifully for me .

dickdasr1234

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121775409#Comment_121775409

I happened to live up the road from a convent in the 80s and nothing would surprise me about how the religious community operated then. They were on a par with the KGB when it came to knowing the business of all and sundry and had subtle ways of fcuking you up if you crossed them.

hoodie6029

It wasn’t the length that makes me feel mixed about it. East of Eden is one of my favourite books and it is a bit of tome.

limnam

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121998010#Comment_121998010

As I said. If what your reading is enjoyable.

Be it a 10 page short story or thousands of pages it's not relevant if it's good.

If you want to just fly through as many books as possible and hit some nonsense yearly book target then have at it.

All the potential distractions have no baring or should have no baring on a book choice. If for some reason someone just wants to have an aversion for a specific book length, while it's fairly odd. People are entitled to choose whatever length of book they want. I just find the reasoning doesn't make much sense.

If I read 4 books over a few weeks or one really good long one what difference does it make? I have all the same distractions when reading 4 as I do 1.

There's definitely books that are too long and drone on for no reason. There's also books that are really long and could be longer as they're written so well. War and peace was just an example.

Saving paper is not high on my list of priorities when choosing a book.

I'm not suggesting your right or wrong. I just don't really understand not reading book X because of it's size.

If it's shite it doesn't matter what length it is. The same if it's good.

NIMAN

Long books, and very long films. Perhaps a sign of the age?

Some long books need to be long, others you often think (like much of today's cinema), "that would be better with a bit of editing".