Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

4 reviews

pixie_d's review

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

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury and Drug use

katha_'s review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

4.0

I loved, how vividly the characters were drawn, how I could relate to them even though i didn't relally like any one of them. The story combines so many themes of growing up, surviving hardships, sexuality, love and you can feel how carefully the story was constructed. It is fascinating how cose and distant a family can be at the same time.
At the same time, getting through the book was hard work: Especially the style in Imelda's part, although fitting, was very hard to read. And the book is pretty long, and while I think I understand the role the family members play, I wonder whether one or two POVs could have been left out.

After getting through 600 pages, the ending is pretty unsatisfying tbh

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Violence, Car accident, and Death

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Excrement, Pregnancy, Animal death, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Drug use, Self harm, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Vomit, Bullying, Abortion, Fire/Fire injury, Infidelity, Murder, Outing, and Rape

Minor: Dementia and Cancer

znvisser's review against another edition

dark emotional 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

4.5

You know those romcoms where you can't help but shout: 'just communicate with each other!!'? Well, this is the family drama version of that. The Bee Sting follows four family members into each of their owns destruction. Despite starting out with a lot of teenage girl drama, this captured me immediately. For one because I’ve once been a teenage girl with a friend like Elaine - so I immediately hated her guts (in my case tho, I was 5 years younger and there was no crush involved); but secondly, it's the writing that drew me in, and while I usually get annoyed easily by authors skipping quotation marks it took me a while to even notice it here (although it was almost too challenging in the Imelda chapters that just threw all (!) punctuation overboard). I loved looking into the heads of these messy, self-absorbed family members who each had their own problems they kept strictly to themselves. This book is full of messaging and coincidences and parallels, and even though at some point it almost loses track of its characters being too busy with very explicit climate change warnings, it finds its way back to the Barnes family, pushing them towards each other again. These characters are haunted by the past and the flashbacks from Imelda and Dickie are an integral part of their story, if only because it provided insight into how this train wreck of a family was doomed already a generation before them. Because gosh, they were doomed, but if they would have actually talked to each other every once in a while none of them did have to be so terribly lonely throughout it all.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Vomit, Abandonment, Blood, Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Homophobia, Police brutality, Rape, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Drug use, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Car accident, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Pregnancy, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Cancer, Gun violence, and War

ronanmcd's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional fast-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

It's a book about being human. About being alive, and having faults. It's a book about Ireland, as it is.
It's brilliant. You don't read it but fall in.
Some notes:
It's an indictment of Ireland that when characters are having a conversation, one that doesn't affect the narrative and is in to show their are going about their everyday, it's always about possessions; who has what, who wants what, who's getting this or that. Observed from life, this is how we talk now.

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By a certain point the book reflects painfully on the reader. Over time we have begun to identify with the characters, to such a point that we fully agree when one character is being urged to murder. It seems fair, it's logical. This is something that shows just how powerful fiction can be. It's immense.

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It's such an absolute experience. We become fully engaged with each character. Immersed in the book, it's hard to look away and see real life in front of us and distinguish fact from fiction. It's disorientating. Deeply.

It's all goes very King Lear in the confusion of the crashing rain at the end, typeset as drama. We are left feeling it was foolish ever to be hopeful.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Bullying, Car accident, Child abuse, Dementia, Drug abuse, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Gun violence, Homophobia, Infidelity, Murder, and Pedophilia