02348nam a22003498i 4500 991026806116407026 UkOxU t| 231106s2024 enk 000|f|eng|d 9780241984406 CIPO000026161 ()9780241984406 (StEdALDL)1/4380522 StDuBDS eng StDuBDS rda UkOxU English Murray, Paul 1975- author 26541 The bee sting / Paul Murray. London : Penguin Books, 2024. 645 pages ; 20 cm The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under - but rather than face the music, he's spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife, Imelda, is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking cattle farmer Big Mike, while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ, in debt to local sociopath 'Ears' Moran, is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home. The present is in meltdown, but the causes lie deep in the past. If you wanted to change this story, how far back would you have to go? To the car crash twelve months before Cass was born? To the infamous bee sting which ruined Imelda's wedding day? All the way back to Dickie at ten years old, trembling before his father in the garden, learning how to be a man? Is it possible that a single moment of bad luck set in motion everything that came after? And does that mean the fate of the Barnes family is already sealed? They are facing a reckoning. If they can't change the past, or rewrite the story they have already lived, is it too late for a happy ending? Families Fiction Ireland 26545 Fortune Fiction 26542 Bunkers (Fortification) Fiction 26543 Dysfunctional families Fiction 24066 Interpersonal relations Fiction 24021 Social classes Fiction 24096 Family secrets Fiction 23679 Married people Fiction 23930 Psychological fiction 22456 Humorous fiction 22906 lcc 0 0 lcc 0 0 TBS TBS 2025-08-28 0 P-EN MUR B05628 2025-08-28 1 2025-08-28 1 4887 4887