Today's Featured Book:
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
Genre: Fiction
Published: August 15, 2023
Page Count: 736 pages
Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
Summary:
The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie’s once-lucrative car business is going under—but Dickie is spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewelry on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attention of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter, Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge drink her way through her final exams. As for twelve-year-old PJ, he’s on the brink of running away.
If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the infamous bee sting that ruined Imelda’s wedding day? To the car crash one year before Cass was born? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, standing in the summer garden with his father, learning how to be a real man?
The Bee Sting, Paul Murray’s exuberantly entertaining new novel, is a tour de force: a portrait of postcrash Ireland, a tragicomic family saga, and a dazzling story about the struggle to be good at the end of the world.
"In the next town over, a man had killed his family. He'd nailed the doors shut so they couldn't get out; the neighbors heard them running through the rooms, screaming for mercy. When he had finished he turned the gun on himself."
"Sometimes she wondered if she even liked him, but usually she was too busy figuring out if he liked her. She drew up lists of reasons he might break up with her: her nose was pointy, he was still in love with Elaine. He didn't both trying to hide the porn on his phone. He rarely sent her messages, and if he did it was just links to his Soundcloud beat tapes. One time she asked him, joking but not really, if he cared about her at all, and he shot right back, as if he'd been waiting for the question, I only care about dead rappers. He seemed to find most of the things she said tiresome; he oscillated between trying to have sex with her and almost total indifference, sometimes over a very short interval of time."
The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.
October 13th - 19th – Do you read anything specific in the fall? (submitted by Billy @ Coffee Addicted Writer)
In November, I usually read for Nonfiction November. But scary stuff? Never!
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