Paul MurrayHamish Hamilton, £18.99By Rosemary GoringSmall-town Ireland is the backdrop of Paul Murray’s saga of a dysfunctional family whose troubles are blackly comic but never less than profoundly sad. No need to quote Tolstoy: Murray’s rococco imagination has supplied a plotline sufficiently convoluted to prove the point about the individuality of each unhappy family. On her way to marry Dickie, Imelda was stung by a bee which got trapped in her veil. Old suffering and suppressed emotions underlie The Bee Sting, which are then mirrored in the present-day. Baggy, self-indulgent, over-long yet compelling, The Bee Sting is an immersion in the tragedy of what-might-have-been.

Source: The Herald June 11, 2023 11:29 UTC