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Contemporary Fiction Views: How fate changes in a moment for each member of a family [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-03  

A teenage girl abandons her studies just when she should be prepping for tests that will get her to university. Instead, she goes clubbing every night with her best friend and wonders when her life will begin.

Her younger brother is happy in his geekdom about nature and video games but feels he may have to run away when a bully shakes him down for money he doesn't have.

Their mother has bought the best of everything for years. But now that the family's auto dealership and garages are sinking after the recession, she's become a dynamo at keeping things afloat.

Their father, who was raised knowing he was expected to run the family business, is at sea in his personal and professional life.

In Paul Murray's latest novel, The Bee Sting, this Irish family appears to be separated from each other. But their stories are as intertwined as the most intricate Celtic cross, just as the various characters' stories were in his last novel before this, Skippy Dies.

Actions and decisions large and small work together in the stories of the Barnes family. Murray presents these decisions, the impetus toward the decisions being made, and the ramifications in sections that highlight each of the family members. In a way, it's four separate stories that in the final section merge. This narrative structure gives each character the chance to be seen as the main protagonist in their lives, not just a peripheral character to another family member.

Cass's story begins the novel. She's been an intense student and a popular member of her class. After all, she's as beautiful as her mother and best friends with the class trendsetter, the equally beautiful Elaine. They love to make fun of their spinster English teacher and her choice of words such as mellifluous. But when she's temporarily replaced by a long-term sub, both fall under the spell of the young, red-haired poet. They stalk her social media posts and decide to become poets as well. Of course this veers into Jean Brodie territory.

She can hardly wait to go to university and get away from her staid family. Her mother's mouth races as fast as her pinball-machine mind must be careening from idea to idea. Her father is about as dull as a walking, talking person can be. Both are highly respected in their small country town, as is Elaine's father, Big Mike. Her brother never got out of the "isn't nature cool?" phase they both went through as children with their dad.

For excitement and a few giggles, Cass and Elaine start hitting the underage club. Some of the people they meet are fascinating to them, especially a mechanic from Poland whose deep black hair and tattoos are exotic to all the kids. When she is later asked by her dull father if it's the one his generation frequented, the reader and Cass are phased. Maybe Dickie isn't so clueless after all. Although Cass is mildly lectured by her parents and rich grandfather, who left the family to go live near a Portugal golf course, the nightly escapades continue until the summer is done and it's exam time.

The novel then switches to her little brother, PJ. He's wrapped up in knowing more than any non-scientist ever did about the natural world. Those days when his father spent time with him, wandering in the woods behind their home and wondering about the coming instability because of the climate crisis, have stayed with him. Well, that and video games. He still frequents the old structure in the woods behind their house, which has been dubbed the Bunker.

The garage hasn't recovered from the recession. Money at home is tighter and tighter. When a bully threatens PJ because of a problem with his family's car being fixed, and demands the money they paid for the repairs that didn't work, he's in a bind. He talks to a friend online, who is always there and always supportive. He tries to sell his stuff. When his grandfather pays a visit, there is great drama about whether he will have a chance to ask for money and if that cash will be given. At the last minute, just when it looks like things might work out, there is a gigantic spanner thrown in the works by his father.

When the novel goes to Imelda's story, Murray makes the brilliant choice of having the prose match her restless mind with the lack of punctuation. It's still an easy section to read, especially with her story. Imelda was the only daughter in a family of rough boys, led by her violent father. The local wise woman took her before the motherless child was expected to take her late mam's place in the household. One evening, she happens to be in that same club that her daughter will one day frequent. And what she considers her real life begins.

She catches sight of the most handsome boy she'll ever see. It's Frank Barnes, the youngest son of successful auto dealership owner Maurice Barnes. Just as Frank is about to leave, he turns and sees her. They will be the most important person in each other's lives as long as they both shall live. The young lovers story could have been maudlin. Yet no matter how it threatens to get mired in overdrawn tropes, it's hard to not cheer on the beauty raised in poverty and abuse, and the town's golden boy who likes people but has no deep core driving him. He enjoys working for his father at the garage but is happy that his older brother, Dickie, has been chosen to run the business some day. After all, he doesn't want the old man breathing down his neck forever.

When tragedy strikes the young lovers, Dickie and Imelda find comfort in each other. When Imelda gets pregnant, they get married. Years later, they are constantly sniping at each other as the money situation deteriorates. Big Mike, who has already been caught having it on with their housekeeper, has now set his sights on Imelda. She misses the time in her life when she was treasured, and treasured that person:

It must be hard for you to understand how lonely a person can be in a marriage Feeling like it doesn't matter whether you sit or stand Come or go Live or due It will all disappear in the silence a tiny speck of white on white Bouncing off the walls like an echo of yourself

Dickie, when the novel shifts to him, is far more complex than has been seen so far. He is a fish out of water at university, a clever boy who knows nothing of the world. He's ridiculed by an older student who thrives on debate, a student who will become very important to him later. He adores his younger brother, Frank. He even has to remind himself that he is the older brother, because everyone else looks up to Frank.

It's a surprise to Dickie when he meets the love of his life at university. Just as they are about to embark on a life together, there is an emergency back home. Dickie goes right back. He becomes that respected member of the community, after barely seeing that his life may have taken another path. Now that things are so bad at the garage, he's spending more time with the local survivalist, rebuilding the Bunker in case of a nuclear bomb or environmental crisis.

The entire novel, for every character, balances on the idea that something has gone wrong and it appears all will be well, that things will work out. Driving the storylines, challenging the balance, are two main ideas. One if the natural world, and what happens if climate change destroys society? How will people cope? Will they be able to survive? Will they turn on each other?

The other main idea is the way love, yearning, wanting and caring can drive a person. Murray writes of the heart's yearning with an openness that anyone who has ever loved another person can connect with. He writes as strongly about the love for family, and how caring for each of them can determine the direction of one's life more than anything else.

It all coalesces in an epiphany Dickie has:

You couldn't protect the people you loved -- that was the lesson of history, and it struck him therefore that to love someone meant to be opened up to a radically heightened level of suffering. He said I love you to his wife and it felt like a curse, an invitation to Fate to swerve a fuel truck head-on into her, to send a stray spark shooting from the fireplace to her dressing gown.

That lesson of history foreshadows the end, which seems inevitable even as getting there did not seem so at first.

When did everything go off the rails? Was there a singular decision or incident that brought them to where they are when the novel begins? Was it when Imelda married Dickie, and kept her face behind a veil throughout the ceremony and wedding dinner after a bee stung her eye on the way to church? Was it when Imelda ended up in a club as a teenager and saw Dickie's brother, Frank, the local football star? Was it when Imelda and Frank knew they were meant for each other? Or was it later, when Dickie thought he was doing the right thing by Imelda and his family but lost himself? Or was it something that happened even earlier in their lives?

Murray allows the reader to make many decisions about what if? That can feel like a cheat in other books, but not this time.

Book Notes:

The Nobel Prize for Literature is due to be announced on Thursday. Among the frontrunners is novelist and Kremlin critic Lyudmila Ulitskaya , and Salman Rushdie, especially after his survival of an assassination attempt and subsequent publication of the gorgeous Victory City. There were years when I would have loved to hear Murakami’s name announced, but think those times have passed by.

The National Book Award finalists were named this morning. The five titles up for the Fiction prize are:

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (a novel I loved)

Temple Folk by Aaliyah Bilai (this could be very, very good)

This Other Eden by Paul Harding (whose work I have admired since Tinkers)

The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen (which looks fascinating)

Blackouts by Justin Torres (from the author of We the Animals, comes out next week)

Among the new titles to be released today:

Brooklyn Crime Novel by Jonathan Lethem!!!!!! From the publisher:

From the author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn comes a sweeping story of community, crime, and gentrification, tracing more than 50 years in one Brooklyn neighborhood.

Spirit Nights by Easterine Kire, FICCI India Book of the Year award. From the publisher:

Drawing on ancient tribal tales, Spirit Nights tells of a prophecy fulfilled when a number of villages are plunged into endless darkness.

The Refugee Ocean by Pauls Toutonghi. From the publisher:

Two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked—over time and distance—by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music.

Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories (Library of America) From the publisher:

Rediscover one of America’s best SF writers in a definitive hardcover edition gathering all her finest work together for the first time

A LGBTQIA+ pioneer joins the Library of America series

Standing Heavy by Frank Wynne Gauz. From the publisher:

Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize - One of The Walrus' Best Fall Books of 2023

A funny, fast-paced, and poignant take on Franco-African history, as told through the eyes of three African security guards in Paris.

Death Valley by Melissa Broder. From the publisher:

The most profound book yet from the visionary author of Milk Fed and The Pisces, a darkly funny novel about grief that becomes a desert survival story.

READERS & BOOK LOVERS SERIES SCHEDULE

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