PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)It is not the size of these themes that dictates the expansiveness of Murray’s fiction, but – as his latest title suggests – the particularity of the writing. A small incident may trigger, or symbolize, the derailing of whole lives ... Is The Bee Sting too long? The first four sections, each devoted to a different Barnes family member, may be more expansive than seems justified by the events they chronicle. But Paul Murray is consistently inventive, observant and funny. He is on intimate terms with this preteen boy, this teenage girl, this lost middle-aged man and this semi-educated woman, and he knows how to make them vivid. For the final 150 pages he switches to the second person for all four characters, in increasingly short sections; the pages turn rapidly as farce and tragedy converge, the latter threatening to get the upper hand.
Jim Crace
PositiveThe GuardianWalter Thirsk, the narrator, tells his story in rhythmical, incantatory prose, clearly not contemporary but not inflexibly antiquated either. Readers of Crace's previous novels will expect Walter's startling way with metaphor: a midnight storm ‘enamelling’ puddles; air that is ‘stewed’; a woman's ‘finchy’ voice. They will also be unsurprised to find a good deal of specialist vocabulary and may wonder, Crace being famous for playful inventions, what terms among ruddock, longpurple, eringe, pippinjay, sorehock and suffingale are genuine … This is a novel with plenty of incident but little drama, creating its considerable power, instead, through Walter's mesmerising narrative. At the end, it may not be too fanciful to conflate Walter and Crace, as the narrator steps out of bounds and says farewell to a way of life.
