I was convinced to buy The Bee Sting by a cashier at Waterstones. It had just been published in paperback at the beginning of May. It was stacked on the counter beside her computer, its garish yellow cover staring up at me. Snobbishly, I think that books stacked at the cashier are rarely worth reading, for they are obviously trying to be sold. In the case of The Bee Sting, it was true, having been branded with a ‘buy one get one half price’ sticker. I was swayed when the cashier told me it suited the other books I was buying – by Bret Easton Ellis and Hang Kan, notable for their minimalism. Since I am trying to read more contemporary fiction, and the fact that The Bee Sting was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year, I decided to buy it.
Imagine my disappointment when I quickly realised Paul Murray’s work is not minimalist, gripping, or anything else that I was promised. I would have stopped reading had it not been the only book I took on holiday, a mistake I won’t be making again. There is so much about this novel I disliked that it would be impossible to write it all down coherently. I must commend Murray for having this work published, because that in itself is nothing short of magical.
Unlike Easton Ellis’ and Kan’s work, The Bee Sting is almost entirely devoid of style. Murray attempts to twist a saga about the Barnes family, their personal troubles, and their failing car dealership. But saga is too grand a word for what Murray has actually created. The Bee Sting is a disastrously disinteresting heap of slow-moving banality that is compelling only in fleeting moments. I can only wonder if the overwhelming critical praise was somehow bought by Murray to sell his book. The plot twists and dynamism promised by these reviews never comes to light, and instead of twists, there are more just bumps in the road that can be seen coming a mile off.
Due to the retrospective storytelling, there is hardly any dramatic tension. Whilst I don’t always think ‘show, don’t tell’ is a rule that must be stuck to for brilliant writing, for most of his novel, Murray spoon feeds and forces us to swallow facts about the Barnes family. We wait, dredging through the too many words and bland techniques, for Murray to get to the point. And when these points comes, some of which attempt to be unexpected, there is no sense of shock because finally a different emotion is felt: relief that something interesting has happened.
The overall tone of the novel is depressing, and it hardly changes, making the entire novel a slog through the characters’ depressing pasts and the abuses they have suffered. Far from the tragicomic promised in a snippet on the book’s cover, The Bee Sting is a slog. I only laughed once, and it was at Murray’s attempt to understand how modern teenagers text, because no one uses a number to replace half of a word anymore, unless it is ironic.
Murray continually is unable to fully characterise his female characters. Cass, the daughter, is in a rut, and we are just told she is a rut, and that’s all there is to her until she goes to university, where she suddenly struggles with her sexuality (just like her father did at the same time in his life). She is unbelievable and sloppily written. Imelda, Cass’ mother, is written without passion. Murray, in the chapters focussing on Imelda, tries to be clever and changes his style. He removes all punctation, apart from capital letters, in order to demonstrate Imelda’s uneducated and lower-class upbringing or her frantic maternal mind, neither of which are very astute ideas. This style also confuses the syntax, meaning sentences and whole passages have to be reread, muddying the linear experience that reading should be.
The only shock of the novel is how realised the male characters appear to be in contrast to their female counterparts. And I say ‘appear to be’ because, on inspection, they are hardly realised at all. PJ, the son, wants to escape his home. It is his single drive and there is little else to him apart from being a fountain of random science facts. Dickie, the only interesting character to read, is revealed to be queer. This is meant to be a twist so we pity his place in the present, but it isn’t because Murray blandly lays out queer stereotypes: Dickie is sensitive, he wasn’t as strong as his brother, he didn’t like to fight his bullies, among many more. Murray builds Dickie firmly in the trope ‘Gay Men Cannot Be Happy’.
We learn that Dickie’s much mentioned accident when he was at university turns out to be an assault and rape by a man Dickie went home with. His lack of happiness continues when he leaves his partner to marry Imelda, and, in the recent past of the novel, he is extorted by a young employee who blackmails Dickie with videos of the pair having sex. Dickie’s sexuality is expressed to be the root cause of all his problems and dissatisfactions. The bumps in the road of Dickie’s narrative occur so close to the end of the dread filled novel that we already know nothing good is going to happen, that he will have no relief. On a personal note, it was only in Dickie’s section that I felt anything other than a low-level boredom; I was instead filled with anger at the abuse suffered by Dickie and how Murray exploited a queer character to so obviously instil the reader with pity.
Only in the last hundred pages do any of the characters act now that the exposition is finally over. However, there has been no momentum up to this point. The characters all abruptly decide to change their lives. The last hundred pages fly past to the novel’s underwhelming close. And still the point of the novel is never expressed. Far from a saga, it is instead a collection of under-realised ideas stitched together into an ugly quilt.
However, I do understand why it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize: a straight white male author attempts to tell a possibly interesting story about the cultures around him in a stylish way. If it had far better edited, and if Murray had more respect for his reader, The Bee Sting might have been what was promised on the surface: writerly, interesting and stylish. Instead, it is a dreary slab of wasted paper and time that makes you want to flip to pages ahead to see if what you are reading is worthwhile.
The only way this book will be a truly commercial success is if all aspiring writers read it to feel better about their own work. Nonsensical and overburdened, The Bee Sting is a testament to the continuing senselessness of the Booker Prize. I was sold this book half price and nothing justifies the £5 I have lost.
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆
The Bee Sting (ISBN: 9780241984406) was published in 2024
