The Bee Sting and Tottenham
The Bee Sting By: Paul Murray
Published: June 8, 2023 Date Finished: January 29, 2024
Rating: 8/10
I’m a proud son of the Irish diaspora on both sides of my family, so anytime a book is set in the Old Country it draws my interest. But while it was the setting that brought me in, it was Paul Murray’s brilliant writing and the compelling story of the Barnes family that kept me engaged for 600+ enjoyable pages. The Bee Sting was very deserving of its place on the Booker Prize shortlist and of all the other honors and accolades it received.
The Barnes family have fallen on hard times after the 2008 financial crisis. The whole town felt the effects, but despite patriarch Dickie’s assurances to his family that business was cyclical and the family car dealership would bounce back, the existential crises facing Dickie, his wife Imelda, and their kids Cass and PJ are deeper and more complex than a struggling market for automobiles.
Cass is finishing up school. She has always been a top student, but as her leaving exams approach, she finds herself doing nothing but drinking and obsessing about what her best friend, the stuck-up Elaine, thinks of her. PJ fears his parents are going to divorce and ship him off to boarding school. Imelda relives all the twists and turns that led her to marry Dickie and possibly consider having an affair with notorious local adulterer (and Elaine’s father) Big Mike. Meanwhile, Dickie’s approach to everything is to bury his head in the sand and team up with his friend Victor to build a survivalist bunker in the woods behind the Barnes’s home.
The book alternates telling the story from the point of view of the four members of the Barnes family. We get the teenage angst of Cass trying to fit in and discover who she is. We experience with PJ the power of being neglected and feeling powerless to keep a struggling family together. Imelda (in a stream of consciousness style without punctuation, possibly to represent her lack of education) relives her challenging childhood of poverty with an alcoholic father before falling in love with Frank Barnes and marrying Frank’s brother Dickie after his tragic death. Dickie relives growing up in Frank’s shadow and finally growing into his own at college in Dublin only to be brought back to the small town and its constraints after his brother’s death.
The novel utilizes a climate change motif to parallel what’s going on in the Barnes family collapse. It’s a sad novel but the author utilizes irony well and will keep you laughing throughout the 600 pages.
I feel a little ambivalent about the ending. At first, I hated it. After 600 pages it just kind of ends abruptly on you. It left me wanting a lot more after all the time I invested in the story. I was incredibly unsure about what even happened (not that I’m altogether opposed with ambiguous endings). But the more I thought about it, read reddit discussions, and watched YouTube videos about it, the more I think I both appreciate the ending and understand it. There was excellent use of foreshadowing throughout the book and I now feel the author “earned” his right to end the novel in this way.
Overall, it was a great family saga that kept me entertained from the first page to the last. It may be a big book, but it reads easily (except some of the Imelda passages) and gets the reader invested in the lives of the Barnes family.
Tottenham (Spurs) to win (at Everton 2/2/23) +145 at Draftkings
YTD 3-2-0 and +1.45 units
I love Everton FC. Between the Bulls, Bears, White Sox, and Everton, my favorite teams have been disappointing me a lot the past decade. As a result, since sports gambling became legal in Illinois, I’ve become familiar with what I like to call the “happiness hedge”.
The most important thing to me when I watch one of my teams play is that they have a good result. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been happening often. To dull the pain of another Everton/Bulls/Sox loss I hedge against them and bet on their opponents to win. That way if my team wins, I’m happy. If they lose, then I win some money and I’m, if not happy, at least I’m a little less sad. While this game is technically a “happiness hedge”, I think I would bet on Tottenham Hotspur against my Toffees even if I were to step back and look at the line as a neutral observer.
The game is at Everton’s home Goodison Park, but that might actually play into Tottenham’s hands this weekend. Everton have been much better away from home this season than at The Old Lady. The announcer during the match at Fulham speculated that it might be because the increased fan support at home expects them to have more of the ball and take more attacking initiative when it actually suits the Everton personnel to sit back and absorb pressure and try to score on the counterattack. This makes a lot of sense to me. All of Everton wins this season have seen their share of possession for the match be less than their opponents. They simply play better when they can absorb attacks and then play direct up the pitch and score on a counter attack or win set pieces from which they are dangerous.
Everton also have the disadvantage of injuries to an already thin squad. The team is without Amadou Onana and Abdoulaye Doucouré and have been forced to play inexperienced James Garner in midfield with partners like Dwight McNeil playing out of position. We might catch a break with Senegal being eliminated from the Africa Cup of Nations earlier this week and Idrissa Gueye could return to his holding midfield role. He’s been sorely missed while he’s been away representing his country. Even with Gueye, Tottenham should be able to dominate the midfield and control possession for most all of the match.
Everton have a lot of things working against them from injuries to points deductions and a relegation fight, but the most challenging thing for them Saturday will be the talent of opponents Tottenham. Spurs currently sit fourth in the league and need every point they can get to qualify for next season’s Champions League. They’ll be without their best player Son Heung-min who is representing South Korea at the Asian Championships. But they may also have their own Senegalese holding midfielder returning in Pape Matar Sarr.
Under manager Ange Postecoglou Spurs will play an exciting style with a high defensive line and a lot of possession. Talismanic midfield creator James Maddison is back healthy and will set up chances for former Everton start striker Richarlison. Micky van de Ven has been one of the best signings of the seasons at centerback and can catch up to anyone if Everton try to play the ball in behind the Tottenham high defensive line.
The lunchtime Saturday kickoff can be weird sometimes, but I think Spurs will be too much for Everton and are too good of a value to pass up at such high plus odds.