Paul Murray was born in Dublin in 1975 and is the author of An Evening of Long Goodbyes, Skippy Dies, The Mark and the Void and The Bee Sting. An Evening of Long Goodbyes was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award and nominated for the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. Skippy Dies was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. The Mark and the Void won the Everyman Wodehouse Prize. The Bee Sting won the Nero Book of the Year Award and the An Post Irish Book of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Writers' Prize for Fiction and the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Paul Murray lives in Dublin.
It can't be overstated how purely pleasurable The Bee Sting is to
read. Murray's brilliant new novel, about a rural Irish clan,
posits the author as Dublin's answer to Jonathan Franzen . . . A
650-page slab of compulsive high-grade entertainment, The Bee Sting
oozes pathos while being very funny to boot . . . Murray's
observational gifts and A-game phrase-making render almost every
page - every line, it sometimes seems - abuzz with fresh and funny
insights . . . At its core this is a novel concerned with the ties
that bind, secrets and lies, love and loss. They're all here,
brought to life with captivating vigour in a first-class
performance to cherish
*Observer (Anthony Cummins)*
The Bee Sting is the finest novel that Murray has yet written and
will surely be one of the books of 2023 . . . It bears comparison
to the brilliant comic writer Jonathan Coe... But Murray is his own
writer, capable of keeping a multi-faceted and compulsive plot
moving along with alacrity and confidence, while seamlessly
blending drama, comedy and heartbreak... For 13 years, Paul Murray
has been best known as the author of Skippy Dies. That, I suspect,
is about to change
*Sunday Independent*
Immersive, brilliantly structured, beautifully written, so dense
yet so compelling, [and] as laugh-out-loud funny as it is deeply
disturbing . . . The Bee Sting is as ambitious as anything that has
gone before, but with a focus and shape that grants it great depth
as well as breadth. Seriously, all you need is this, your suntan
lotion and a few days off work and you're good to go . . . I didn't
see the plot twists coming. And they keep on coming, And coming
again . . . I began with an ovation. I'll end abruptly, and in
awe... Paul Murray, the undisputed reigning champion of epic Irish
tragicomedy, has done it again
*The Spectator (Ian Samson)*
The most enjoyable new novel I came across this year. A sprawling,
Franzen-esque saga about the Barnes family in Ireland recovering
from the 2008 financial crisis, it’s an amazing piece of realist
fiction, full-bodied, multi-narrative; a huge swing by Murray
*Observer*
A triumph. The Bee Sting deserves all the praise I am heaping on
it. It is generous, immersive, sharp-witted and devastating; the
sort of novel that becomes a friend for life
*Financial Times (John Self)*
Expertly foreshadowed and so intricately put together, a
brilliantly funny, deeply sad portrait of an Irish family in crisis
. . . Murray is triumphantly back on home turf - troubled
adolescents, regretful adults, secrets signposted and exquisitely
revealed, each line soaked in irony ranging from the gentle to the
savage . . . We live though hundreds of pages on tenterhooks, and
the suspense and revelations keep coming until the end [...] He is
brilliant on fathers and sons, sibling rivalry, grief,
self-sabotage and self-denial, as well as the terrible weakness
humans have for magical thinking... A tragicomic triumph, you won't
read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year
*Guardian (Justine Jordan)*
This bumper novel is already gaining plaudits as the book of the
summer, and if it's a meaty, heart punching, expertly executed
family saga you need this August, then you can stop the search now
. . . Murray delivers scarcely a duff sentence in a 600-page novel
that's pure unadulterated pleasure. It's been compared to Jonathan
Franzen's The Corrections; I'd argue it's better than that
*Daily Mail (Claire Allfree)*
No one writes tragicomedy as good as this . . . Both brilliant
entertainment and a penetrating look at the human condition, as
heavy with pathos as it is rich with humour. And if 650 pages asks
a lot of the reader, in this case it more than delivers
*iNews*
Delightfully rackety, raucously funny... The Bee Sting is on a par
with Skippy Dies, Murray's most beloved book, and certainly exceeds
it in ambition. A masterpiece
*Irish Independent*
Murray is a natural storyteller who knows when to withhold, to
indulge, to surprise. He specialises, like Dickens, in lengthy
sagas that are mammoth in scope, generous with detail and
backstory, flush with humour and colourful characters, all of it
steeped in social realism . . . Ambitious, expansive, hugely
entertaining tragicomic fiction
*Irish Times (Sarah Gilmartin)*
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