HT reviewer Saudamini Jain picks her favourite read of 2023

The Bee Sting is about family and friendship and climate change — and the heaviness of existing in the world now. In the Irish countryside, the once rich Barnes’ family have taken a huge hit during the 2014 financial crisis in Ireland. The novel is told through the successive perspectives of each member of the family — Dickie and Imelda and their children Cass and PJ.

It opens with a profile of a toxic female friendship — like a cross between Elena Ferrante and Sally Rooney — as Cass is obsessed with her manipulative and bitchy best friend Elaine. It’s about the end of school, and her desperation to move out of their rural town and “live somewhere I can get good coffee and not have to see nature and everyone doesn’t look like they were made out of mashed potato.” Imelda’s is this stream-of-consciousness-y section without any punctuation and I found myself reading this breathless section surprisingly with great ease unencumbered by pauses as my brain raced along with Imelda’s into her anxieties and childhood of great poverty. PJ’s is the funniest, just adorable, part of the book as this preteen boy mopes about feeling the family’s — on top of his own — miseries, all the while making a list of “TOP TEN REASONS CASS IS A BITCH AND YOU’RE GLAD SHE’S LEAVING” — “#2: DISRESPECTFUL TO OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS.” This is familiar territory for Murray. — his 2010 novel, Skippy Dies, which I plan to read next (it’s supposedly hilarious) is about life in a Dublin boys’ school.

Dickie’s is this stunningly unexpected and tender account of Trinity in the 90s — and the anxieties of a man on the brink of bankruptcy, struggles with the self, and a larger looming fear about the state of the world. He is preoccupied with “future-proofing” and building a bunker for the family to weather the consequences of climate change.

All of it comes together in the final section with an inventive and very effective use of second person, which feels like a video game.

Esi Edudyan, the head judge for the Booker Prize this year, revealed, after the ceremony, that the decision favouring Paul Lynch’s dystopian novel Prophet Song — struggles of a family as Ireland slips into authoritarian rule — wasn’t unanimous, and that The Bee Sting had a good chance of winning. It’s what I had been rooting for!

Saudamini Jain is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year, is the best book I’ve read in years. I can’t remember the last time I binge read anything. I think I had even forgotten that there was such a thing as staying up late guzzling down a whole novel — and this one is at 600-plus pages — several nights in a row. I did not stream whatever show everybody was watching; I did not reach out for Instagram. I read — at first, relating hard; then, disappearing into the characters’ secret lives; all the while, blown away by the form; and also, bursting out laughing often.

The Bee Sting is about family and friendship and climate change — and the heaviness of existing in the world now. In the Irish countryside, the once rich Barnes’ family have taken a huge hit during the 2014 financial crisis in Ireland. The novel is told through the successive perspectives of each member of the family — Dickie and Imelda and their children Cass and PJ.

It opens with a profile of a toxic female friendship — like a cross between Elena Ferrante and Sally Rooney — as Cass is obsessed with her manipulative and bitchy best friend Elaine. It’s about the end of school, and her desperation to move out of their rural town and “live somewhere I can get good coffee and not have to see nature and everyone doesn’t look like they were made out of mashed potato.” Imelda’s is this stream-of-consciousness-y section without any punctuation and I found myself reading this breathless section surprisingly with great ease unencumbered by pauses as my brain raced along with Imelda’s into her anxieties and childhood of great poverty. PJ’s is the funniest, just adorable, part of the book as this preteen boy mopes about feeling the family’s — on top of his own — miseries, all the while making a list of “TOP TEN REASONS CASS IS A BITCH AND YOU’RE GLAD SHE’S LEAVING” — “#2: DISRESPECTFUL TO OTHER FAMILY MEMBERS.” This is familiar territory for Murray. — his 2010 novel, Skippy Dies, which I plan to read next (it’s supposedly hilarious) is about life in a Dublin boys’ school.

Dickie’s is this stunningly unexpected and tender account of Trinity in the 90s — and the anxieties of a man on the brink of bankruptcy, struggles with the self, and a larger looming fear about the state of the world. He is preoccupied with “future-proofing” and building a bunker for the family to weather the consequences of climate change.

All of it comes together in the final section with an inventive and very effective use of second person, which feels like a video game.

Esi Edudyan, the head judge for the Booker Prize this year, revealed, after the ceremony, that the decision favouring Paul Lynch’s dystopian novel Prophet Song — struggles of a family as Ireland slips into authoritarian rule — wasn’t unanimous, and that The Bee Sting had a good chance of winning. It’s what I had been rooting for!

Saudamini Jain is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.