Reading Between the Lines: The Bee Sting, Paul Murray

A confession here - I listen to books.  I have done ever since I was 14 and my Latin tutor, Mr Whitworth, who was legally blind, told me that he got cassette tapes in the post with newspaper stories read aloud on them.  Genius.  Now, of course we have audio books in all forms, everywhere.  But the magic of someone reading me a story as I take my dog for a walk has never left.  

And so I downloaded The Bee Sting.  It didn’t take long before I was thoroughly, but thoroughly confused. The characters didn’t stay in my brain - who was the pretty one, who was the storyteller - which one’s dad lost the garage?  But the writing was magical.  I went down to my local bookseller and brought the bright yellow, thick, book.  

It is wonderful. 

The words lift from the page in a way they simply didn’t when they were voices in my ears.  There’s a rolling, hypnotic rhythm to Murray’s prose, a rich layering of irony and tragedy, which is ironic because it works better for me when I have the physical book in my hands.  On paper, the novel’s structure - shifting between perspectives, playing with time - becomes a triumph rather than a tangle.  You can flick back, pause, remind yourself of who is called what.  It’s a book that needs to be lived with, rather than drifted through on a morning dog walk.

And that’s the power of reading, isn’t it?  Stories settle differently in the mind when they pass through the eyes rather than the ears.  Audiobooks are wonderful - gifts of accessibility, company, and comfort - but the act of reading demands something of us.  It asks for patience, attention, and, crucially, rereading as you go along.  The Bee Sting, with its tragicomic genius, its quietly devastating turns, deserves that kind of engagement. 

Verba volant, scripta manent.