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Paul Murray on The Bee Sting

Paul Murray on The Bee Sting

Released Wednesday, 17th July 2024
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Paul Murray on The Bee Sting

Paul Murray on The Bee Sting

Paul Murray on The Bee Sting

Paul Murray on The Bee Sting

Wednesday, 17th July 2024
Good episode? Give it some love!
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Set in small-town, post-crash Ireland, The Bee Sting follows the Barnes family—Dickie, Imelda, Cass and PJ—as the fabric of their lives first frays at the edges, then begins to unravel completely. The Barnes’ are endearing, and complex, and funny, and infuriating… In short, one of the most realistic and memorable portrayals of a family you’ll find in contemporary fiction.


Throughout the book The Bee Sting’s focus masterfully expands and contracts between the minutiae of adolescent friendship, marital tensions and financial woes, and the threat of full scale global apocalypse, while touching on pretty much everything in between.


It is a book about families, how they build you up and how they knock you down, about how both the lived past and the imagined future weigh on our lives, about coincidence, about loneliness, about optimism, about love and loss, about climate change, and about shame… it’s also a book, unsurprisingly, about bees—although perhaps not in the way that you might think.


Buy The Bee Sting: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/the-bee-sting-3


*


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.


Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. His latest novel, Beasts of England, a sequel of sorts to Animal Farm, is available now. Buy a signed copy here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/beasts-of-england


Listen to Alex Freiman’s latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w


Get bonus content on Patreon

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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The Shakespeare and Company Interview

Discover your next favourite book, or take a deep dive into the mind of an author you love, with The Shakespeare and Company Interview podcast.Long-form interviews with internationally acclaimed authors, recorded from our bookshop in the heart of Paris. Hosted by S&Co Literary Director, Adam Biles.Discover all our upcoming events here.If you enjoy these conversations, you can order The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews here.Past guests include: Ottessa Moshfegh, Ian McEwan, Ali Smith, Har Kunzru, Rachel Kushner, Katie Kitamura, Elif Shafak, Claire-Louiose Bennett, Leïla Simoni, Ian Dunt, David Runciman, Richard Powers, Eimear McBride, Armando Iannucci, Lauren Grodd, Lauren Elkin, Recebcca Solnit, John Berger, Hollie McNish, Michael Pedersen, Rob Doyle, Philippe Sands, George Saunders, Edouard Louis, Rachel Cusk, Preti Taneja, Alejandro Zambra, DBC Pierre, Meg Mason, Sandra Newman, David Simon, Joshua Cohen, Geoff Dyer, David Wallce-Wells, Emul Saint-John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Tess Gunty, A.M. Homes, John Higgs, Miriam Toews, Kamila Shamsie, Annie Ernaux, William Boyd, David Keenan, Jonathan Coe, Coco Mellors, Tom Mustill, Jeanette Winterson, Sarah Churchwell, Katy Hessel, Don Paterson, Elizabeth McCracken, Meena Kandasamy, Aleksandar Hemon, Catherine Lacey, Xiaolu Guo, M. John Harrison, Dolly Adderton, Hernan Diaz, Kathryn Scanlan, Ben Lerner, Isabel Waidner, Nick Laird, Adam Thirlwell, Mark O'Connell, Marie Darrieussecq, Jo Ann Beard, C Pam Zhang, Naomi Klein...and many, many more. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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