The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

The Barnes family is in trouble.

Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under -- but rather than face the music, he's spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ, in debt to local sociopath 'Ears' Moran, is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home.

The present is in meltdown but the causes lie deep in the past. If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the day Dickie hired a handsome drifter to help him out in the garage? To the car crash twelve months before Cass was born? To the infamous bee sting which ruined Imelda's wedding day? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, trembling before his father in the garden, learning how to be a real man?

Is it possible that a single moment of bad luck sets in motion everything that came after? And does that mean the Barnes' fate is already sealed? The family is facing a reckoning. If they can't change the past, or rewrite the story they have already lived, is it too late for a happy ending?

Genres: Literary Fiction - Contemporary - Ireland - Irish Literature - Family - Irish Author