An Irish multi-pov family tragicomedy.

The Bee Sting reads like a prestige TV show if it were a book. It’s an absolute behemoth of a novel, clocking in at more than 600 pages — one devoured in just a few days.

Murray’s characters in the Bee Sting steer themselves into disaster after disaster — reading the Bee Sting feels like watching a train crash over and over again.

The book starts out slowly — gradually revealing the inner lives of the four members of the Barnes family. The story follows Cass, the teenage daughter, living her life leading up to her college entrance exams — for about hundred pages or so. But by the end of the book, Murray is switching between the different POVs, every other paragraph.

In doing so, Murray effectively builds up to the conclusion of the novel when all the characters, their problems, and the consequences of the secrets they’ve kept all collide with one another in a chaotic maelstorm for one last time.

Murray’s ability to give each POV character a distinctive voice surprised me — bringing them to life in ways that other authors often fail to.

The most unique of the POVs is Imelda’s, the wife and mother of the Barnes family. Her chapters evoke the style of José Saramago. With little to no punctuation to be found in her chapters, Imelda’s dialogue and inner monologues blend into one another seamlessly — bringing to life to her effervescent personality.

There’s a lot to love in the Bee Sting and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a well-crafted, engrossing book to read.

As long as you’re expecting the story to get dark, you’ll probably have a good time with it.

NB: Reading the Bee Sting I was reminded of Under The Dome (Stephen King):

• Both feature small towns with gravitational pulls (and big AF domes) that make it hard to escape from them.
• Both are gigantic novels
• Both feature flawed characters, double downing on their missteps, and finding themselves on collision courses with one another.

If you liked one, you might like the other?