A Terrific Tragicomedy

Paul Murray's The Bee Sting is a tender and extravagant sketch of apocalypse

- Radhika Oberoi

IN a rare moment of normalcy, the Barnes family of The Bee Sting sits on the sunlit terrace of a local restaurant, Genevieve's, celebrating the Leaving Certificate exam results of their daughter Cassandra (Cass). She has passed, in spite of her alcoholic befuddlements and dingy trysts with strange boys in the weeks before the exams.

Soon, very soon, she will leave this small, overfamiliar town for Trinity College Dublin, with her best friend, Elaine. But for the wingspan of a moment, her father Dickie can't stop telling everyone in the vicinity about her results, and her mother Imelda "feels a kind of worn happiness like they are normal".

Happiness, however threadbare, is what the Barneses seek in their own curious ways, although they aren't aware of this pursuit. Ostensibly, each of them is looking for ways to escape immediate circumstances. Paul Murray's protagonists-Cass, her twelve-year-old brother PJ, their parents Dickie and Imelda-are unhinged by financial troubles, the ghosts of the past, a small-town's relentless gaze, precarious weather, hormones.