Reviews tagging 'Stalking'

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

11 reviews

mary_lake's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

a beautifully written tragic and emotionally complex tale. i would highly recommend! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Rape, Toxic relationship, Grief, Stalking, Car accident, and Toxic friendship

graceanais's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Easily my favourite read of the year so far. The layers, complexity and fucked-upness of human beings captured so beautifully. Heartbreaking. Epic. Awful.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Rape, Violence, Stalking, and Outing

makayla_radford's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I had a lot more expectations for this book going into it based on many of the reviews. The concept of it sounds great, and really the plot itself was captivating and kept me coming back to the book. 

That said there were some things I found very distracting while I was reading. The book is centered around the 2008 financial crisis, but there are constantly references to things that did not exist/were not commonly used at the time such as Twitch or Instagram. Additionally there were subplots that never actually received conclusions which continued to distract me from the main story.

I have to disagree with many other reviews though since I actually liked the ending. I felt it was fitting for the book and boosted it up to ⭐️⭐️⭐️

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Homophobia, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Grief, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Stalking, Car accident, Murder, Toxic friendship, and Alcohol

michaelabee's review against another edition

reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Homophobia, Rape, and Car accident

Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Death, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Stalking, Pregnancy, and Toxic friendship

franceselsie's review against another edition

dark emotional funny lighthearted mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Gun violence, Sexual content, and Vomit

Moderate: Drug use, Pedophilia, Toxic relationship, Dementia, Stalking, and Car accident

misscaitie's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Barely finished it. 600 pages of misery

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, and Car accident

Moderate: Alcoholism, Biphobia, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Infidelity, Dementia, and Stalking

Minor: Addiction, Biphobia, Gun violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, Death of parent, Murder, and Gaslighting

pixie_d's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Rape, Sexual assault, Grief, Stalking, Car accident, and Alcohol

Moderate: Drug use and Fire/Fire injury

stephenhunsaker's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Paul Murray you have made me question if I can’t read. Who knew leaving all punctuation, including periods, out of writing would make it soooo damn hard to understand. 

This book is truly one of the bleakest books I have read and utterly destroys any semblance of hope for people and society. It’s a hard read, one with no resolution to grasp on to for relief, just empty darkness. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Rape, and Outing

Moderate: Homophobia and Stalking

rubyhayes's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The Bee Sting is a startling portrayal of a seemingly normal nuclear family. Imelda & Dickie are parents to Cass & PJ. The multi-perspective novel opens with the children’s accounts of the day-to-day home-life and relationships, each with their own struggles. Our introductions to Imelda and Dickie are shallow, only 2D versions of the vivid characters we eventually learn they are. I found myself longing to read more of their lives to understand exactly how they reached their present day, full of impending doom. The depth of these characters is merely the beginning of Paul Murray’s extraordinary storytelling capabilities, while being ambitious in scale, it has been executed masterfully. Through its various and changing forms, we follow the family into its descent. The chaos students use is motivated by love, along with shame as its catalyst. It is foremost a peripheral look into the gradual unravelling of sanity due to one man’s shame. This shame’s impact is explored at both the personal level and a greater cosmic/existential level. Each section builds on the previous, revealing their utter lack of knowledge of each other’s lives. The changes of perspective, explore deeply the unknowability of others behind their masks. The novel concerns itself with the impact of the past on the present and future, the haunting nature of this past the story is a remarkable show of talent, Paul Murray spellbindingly weaves together seemingly unlinked moments, presenting their connections only later with the attached repercussions.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Homophobia, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, Grief, and Car accident

Minor: Kidnapping and Stalking

reads_eats_explores's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Bee Sting opens with a tale of woe, “a man had killed his family” in another town, and “rumours swirled about affairs, addiction, hidden files on his computer.” Are these prophecies of what awaits the Barnes family, our multilayered protagonists?

The Barnes, oh, how can one small family have so many adversities to face? They live in an unnamed small Irish town and are struggling on so many levels; godawful for them but great for the storytelling.

In the wake of a recession, the Volkswagen dealership run by Dickie Barnes has seen sales plummet while also facing a surge in complaints about repair work. Does Dickie know more than he's letting on? In an effort to stick his head in the sand as far as the dubious business at the garage goes, he retreats into himself and the woodlands behind their house, where he attempts to create a ‘safe zone’ where they'll be safe when not if the shit hits the fan.

A disgruntled client’s son threatens to beat Dickie’s boy, PJ, with a hammer. PJ sinks deeper into loneliness and online gaming forums, where he gets befriended by a profile that reeks of malevolence.

PJ's sister, Cass, flounders with her capricious best friend, peer pressure, leaving cert stress and the demon drink.

Their mother, Imelda, bears the brunt of the neighbours’ schadenfreude. She stops her beloved online shopping (her one true joy) and worries that she has somehow caused this rake load of trouble through a family curse.

Told through these multiple points of view in chapters narrated by each character, we get the modern day tale with plenty of historical flashbacks thrown in.

These flashbacks mostly reveal the poverty and old passions that shade Dickie and Imelda’s rather uneasy marriage.

All the characters are well developed and paint their own grim picture, but for me, Imelda’s sections are the stand out highlights. They are structured in the stream-of-consciousness style that really draws you in, from her early years of violence and poverty down “piggery lane” to her current predicament.

In this tragicomic behemoth read, Murray shows a great talent for blending humour and pathos. Yes, we trudge from bad to worse, with Murray tirelessly concocting fresh anguish for the Barneses, but there's a good dose of quintessentially Irish humour along the way. 4.5⭐

Many thanks to Penguin Books Ireland for an advance copy. As always, this is an honest review.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Biphobia, Bullying, Cancer, Child abuse, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Homophobia, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Dementia, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Stalking, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Lesbophobia, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism