Guest review by Cathy Cassidy: THE BEE STING by Paul Murray

 

"Raw and messy, sometimes ugly and frightening, sometimes funny, happy, heartwarming and heartbreaking."

Cathy Cassidy is a children's author, writing mainly for the teen and pre-teen market. She has written over 30 books and been published across the world. Before this, she worked as an illustrator, an art teacher, a journalist for legendary teen mag Jackie and an agony aunt. These days, when not reading or writing, she makes bespoke keepsake ragdolls and wanders along the shoreline with her rescue lurcher in tow...

My daughter-in-law, the only person I know who reads more obsessively than I do, challenged me to write something down about every book I read in 2024. Always up for a challenge, I promised I would. I've read new and secondhand books; books from the library and from book exchanges; books given by friends, bought in supermarkets, train stations, charity shops. It's been interesting ... a patchwork of gripping or throwaway thrillers, children's books, music memoir, nature, history, biography. All of that, plus a few genuinely beautiful novels that have left an imprint on my heart.
 
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray is one of those. On the surface, it's the story of a family falling apart in small town Ireland... but it's also innovative, beautifully written and wonderfully nuanced. It hooked me in at once, then went on to push past the boundaries and break all the rules. Do not expect a linear plot, reliable viewpoint or a clearcut ending. Instead, you will get to see inside the heads and the hearts of the characters as scene after scene unfolds, as if written in invisible ink on sheets of tissue paper that pile up, overlap, build the story from many different angles.

At times this all feels like a messy, glorious tangle of threads; whenever the author pulls those threads together, they tangle all over again. Gradually, in spite of this, the story comes into focus and the threads unravel to form a perfectly woven whole. The ending infuriated and broke me... it made me hope for one thing, then delivered the opposite ... maybe! It stopped short of spelling things out or tying up the loose ends, and I'm grateful for that, for the sliver of hope I could still hang onto.

The Bee Sting made me question what a novel actually is ... how it isn't just the story of the characters, but our own story too. I haven't felt so emotionally connected to a book for a long time. I was enchanted by a make-your-own-rules writing style that felt so authentic, so real, it made me want to throw out every single thing I've ever learned about writing and start again from scratch. The Bee Sting is raw and messy, sometimes ugly and frightening, sometimes funny, happy, heartwarming and heartbreaking. It offers moments of real awe and wonder.

A good book can make you feel that you're on the point of understanding something big, something important and life-changing ... about yourself or about humanity. The Bee Sting did that for me. We read to understand ourselves and others, to live a different life, just for a while, and this novel created a world so achingly real I know I won't ever forget it.

My daughter-in-law said I'd love this book, and as usual, she was right. After reading, I realised Paul Murray was also he author of Skippy Dies, a powerful YA I read ten or twelve years ago ... The Bee Sting is even better. I've loved this reading challenge and the booky dialogue it has opened up... on the recommendations of friends, I've discovered new authors and amazing books, and my to-read pile just keeps growing. The Bee Sting was book 107 ... but I'm not finished yet!

The Bee Sting is published by Penguin.