The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

I just finished the Bee Sting last night. It took me about 3 months to finish it and I nearly gave up at about 400 pages. I really don’t get the hype. Murray is very good with his observational prose in parts but it’s bloated and boring for lots of it. Absolutely hated how the Imelda character’s parts had no punctuation- pretentious nonsense.

I didn’t like the ending either.

Well i loved it.

Characters were all brilliant and you got to know them very well. It was all "show, don't tell" with regard to their character formation, which added to the length, but for me at least the book had a brilliant flow which made it very readable.

Simple matter of time investment. The bigger the book, the more annoying if it turns out to be a waste of time.

And I don't think I ever read a 600 page book that wouldn't have benefitted from bring shortened.

Never heard anyone say War and Peace should have been longer.

On the other hand sooner an excellent 600 page book than 3 poor 200 page ones

The Bee Sting is the best thing I have read in the last couple of years. We deserved of its booker shortlisting. Yes, its 650 pages long but written in very accessible language which make it easier to read faster for me.

I would have liked a bit more certainty at the end of the book though...kinda left me wondering.

Picked this up at the weekend, but the print I got seems to be littered with punctuation errors. No full stops, no commas, random capitalised words, which all make it very difficult to read/follow for me. Thought I may have just downloaded the version and that has the same issues. Has anybody else noticed this, seems to run from around page 160 into the 300s?

Ah ok, I feel as though I'm going to have to abandon ship on this one. My brain just doesnt want to cooperate😅

Thanks for the condescending suggestions. I think my book choices are generally quite good but never read a 600+ page book that wouldn't have benefitted from trimming.

And actually Chekhov, who I love, said much the same: almost every book he read seemed to him too long. He was a master of concision.

However people have different preferences, some enjoy sprawling epics, and that's fine too

I was just pointing out Chekhov as you said you never heard anyone say War and Peace was too short.

He did.

I really enjoyed it but agree that the era felt quite off to me

I enjoyed Dickie and Cass’s stories in Bee Sting. I thought that they were brilliant.
But I could have done without the rest. I honestly struggled to find the motivation to finish. To me, all the other’s stories seemed tacked on. We didn’t need the story of Imelda and Frank and Imelda’s family history.
PJ’s story of bring targeted by a cartoonish bully went nowhere and adding nothing to the story.
As a whole, I don’t think it all gelled together. A much more focused book would have been better.

As a reader of fiction myself I would argue against overly long novels and I can see why some/many readers resent them. Life has changed to the fast lane . Look at the competition these days for people 's time . There's competition to reading from radio , tv , computers , cinemas , sports , gyms , night courses , functions , eating out etc. Not much of this existed in the 19th century -or even before the mid 20th .

I think any author should be able to say anything useful they have to say in 250/300 pages. It's a discipline I wish they would cultivate. ( probably save paper too ? )

I happened to live up the road from a convent in the 80s and nothing would surprise me about how the religious community operated then. They were on a par with the KGB when it came to knowing the business of all and sundry and had subtle ways of fcuking you up if you crossed them.

As I said. If what your reading is enjoyable.

Be it a 10 page short story or thousands of pages it's not relevant if it's good.

If you want to just fly through as many books as possible and hit some nonsense yearly book target then have at it.

All the potential distractions have no baring or should have no baring on a book choice. If for some reason someone just wants to have an aversion for a specific book length, while it's fairly odd. People are entitled to choose whatever length of book they want. I just find the reasoning doesn't make much sense.

If I read 4 books over a few weeks or one really good long one what difference does it make? I have all the same distractions when reading 4 as I do 1.

There's definitely books that are too long and drone on for no reason. There's also books that are really long and could be longer as they're written so well. War and peace was just an example.

Saving paper is not high on my list of priorities when choosing a book.

I'm not suggesting your right or wrong. I just don't really understand not reading book X because of it's size.

If it's shite it doesn't matter what length it is. The same if it's good.

I'm almost finished this book, maybe 100 pages to go.

This is the Guardian's headline to it's review of the book

A brilliantly funny, deeply sad portrait of an Irish family in crisis from the author of Skippy Dies

What am I missing because I haven't read a funny line in the whole thing…so far. All I feel while reading it is uneasy, apprehensive and generally a bit worried about what's going on.

It's a brilliant book. The Imelda and the Dickie sections are great reading.

I remember chuckling a couple of times but not enough to call this a funny book.