Summary of The Bee Sting a novel by Lisa Jewell E-Book

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• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

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Summary of The Bee Sting a novel by Lisa Jewell

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Paul Murray's The Bee Sting is a thought-provoking novel about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good person in a world falling apart. The Barnes family faces financial struggles, with Dickie building an apocalypse-proof bunker, Imelda selling jewelry, and Cass struggling with exams. The novel explores themes of post-crash Ireland, tragedy, and the struggle to be good in the end of the world. Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize.

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Summary of The Bee Sting a novel by Lisa Jewell

Paul Murray's The Bee Sting explores family, fortune, and the Barnes family's financial struggles in post-crash Ireland, highlighting themes of tragedy and the struggle for good in a falling world.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

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Summary The Bee Sting

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Summary of The Bee Sting a novel by Paul Murray

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SYLVIAS

SYLVIAS

I

In a town over, a man killed his family and he turned the gun on himself. Rumours swirled about affairs, addiction, and hidden files on his computer. Elaine, a bright and beautiful girl, was surprised it didn't happen more often. They first met in Chemistry class, where Elaine poured iodine on Cass's eczema during an experiment. They were friends and had a similar life, with both girls coming from well-known families.

Elaine had golden hair, green eyes, and a perfect figure. She had what Cass called "je ne sais quoi" and was thinking about entering Miss Universe Ireland. However, the adversity requirement for Miss Universe Ireland was unfair, as each contestant had an adversity they had overcome. Elaine hated their town, where everyone knew everyone and their business. They had no proper shops, and their only interest was Gaelic games.

Elaine hated Gaelic games, especially football, hurling, camogie, and the county. She was bad at sports and was always the last up the rope in gym class. The Tidy Towns Committee, which Cass's mother was a member of, was always shited on about the natural beauty of the area. Elaine did not accept this, believing nature was almost as bad as sports.

Cass didn't care for GAA either, and the presence of Elaine was enough to cancel out the town's faults. She had never felt so connected to someone. When they messaged each other at night, they became so in sync that they felt like they were the same person. They would sometimes feel like they were flying above the town, in a pure space that belonged completely to them and their best friend.

Elaine and Cass are friends who often hang out at each other's homes after school. Elaine likes to hang out with her mother, Imelda, who is a famous beauty with blonde hair and green eyes. She is a bystander in these conversations, and she finds Imelda's skin eczema to be a real adversity. Imelda has taken her daughters to Dublin for pre-sales, and they have a secret elevator where only platinum customers know about them. Elaine feels that her mother hasn't aged well, and she fears that her looks will be transitory.

Elaine's mother has mystique and magnetism, which she believes is why she married Cass's dad. She doesn't want to devalue her mother in Elaine's eyes, but she doesn't know how Elaine could think Imelda had mystique. Spending time with her mother is like walking through a blizzard, with thoughts and observations that are cumulatively overwhelming.

Elaine would have preferred that Elaine stayed away from her house altogether, and after school they only went to Elaine's house, where her housekeeper, Augustina, would make iced coffees and they would sit in Elaine's bedroom looking at the Miss Universe Ireland website. She knows she should be thankful for her mother's undeniable glamour, especially now.

When Elaine first became aware that business was slowing down, she thought it might not be a bad thing. She had confided that before they became friends, she thought Cass and her family were stuck-up. However, the slowdown quickly became more of a freefall, and Elaine couldn't bear it. The unloved, unbought cars reminded her of stray dogs in the pound, waiting to be put down.

Dad does his best to comfort her, saying things will pick up, but that only tightened the knot in her stomach.

Dickie Barnes, a salesman, was not a natural salesman and often spent time reading books. He often argued with customers about buying cars, citing his father's advice that the key to the business was not selling cars but building relationships. However, the downturn in the business was not due to a crash, but rather a slow, slow process that had been going on for years. The microchip factory had let a hundred people go, and half of the shops on Main Street had an A4 page in the window, thanking customers for their loyalty.

Elaine's father had gone in with a developer on a small estate of houses, but the developer had gone bust, and the unfinished houses were mouldering away. Elaine's mother, Imelda, was not handling the downturn well, and she had largely stopped going out. She believed Cass had turned her father against the garage, and she believed he had turned his father against the garage.

Cass had done a project for Geography class about climate change, which involved calculating how their work contributed to global warming. He had thrown himself into this, and they calculated the CO2 emissions of the cars they sold and their lifetime greenhouse gas emissions. After that, he was no longer the same, making vegetarian meals and cycling to work. Maurice, Cass's grandfather, had to fly back from Portugal to talk him out of expanding the fleet to sell more electric cars.

Imelda said that the damage was done, and he never put his back into it again. All because his golden girl made a song-and-dance.

Cass, a disturbed woman, has been affected by the project and climate change, as well as her mother's global attitude. She has been paralyzed by the inescapability of her own evil and the global phenomenon of the international car trade. Elaine, Cass' mother, is concerned about her mother's moods and her friendship with Dickie. Cass tries to dissuade Elaine from visiting, but she remains obsessed with Imelda.

Elaine noticed the wedding photos in the good room, where Cass and PJ were only allowed in when there were visitors. She noticed that there were no wedding photos, which Elaine pointed out as mysterious. Cass was sure she was wrong, but she couldn't disagree. The house was full of free newspapers and glossy magazines, with Imelda appearing in the back pages of these publications.

Cass and her father spent the afternoon in Cass's bedroom, coming up with conspiracy theories but nothing explained it. One night, Cass asked her father if he had any photos of their wedding. He didn't reply, but as she continued to question him, he smiled and said there were some somewhere. Cass wondered if there was a secret conspiracy, and if she timed it right, she was bound to blurt out the truth.

In the end, Cass's mother's actions and the situation led to a complex and complex story.

Cass is trying to avoid her mother, who is in a bad mood. Dickie has sold her car, and while she is gone, Big Mike has come in looking for a car for Augustina, the housekeeper. Cass's dad has been trying to shift the car for almost a year, and she believes Big Mike bought it out of malice. Cass tries to avoid provocative questions and keeps Elaine out of her way. Elaine reveals that her father had been at Dickie and Imelda's wedding seventeen years ago and had told her what had happened. Cass is offended that Elaine has uncovered a secret that rightfully belongs to her.

Elaine tells Cass that she found a bee trapped in her veil as Imelda's father was driving her to the church. She starts freaking out, but her dad thought she didn't want to marry Dickie. When he realized what was happening, he tried to get the veil off her but couldn't. He hears a scream and stung her, and she doesn't tell anyone what happened.

A moment passes in silence, and they catch each other's eye. They start laughing, and they end up rolling around on the floor. Imelda is so vain that she couldn't bear to be the punchline of a joke. Cass sends Elaine a close-up picture of a bee with the message "Will you bee mine Cass?" and Cass sends her a back-up picture of a bee superimposed onto a wedding dress. They spend the night sending random pictures of bees, each one as funny as the one before.

The story revolves around the story of Imelda, a young girl who is about to wed her mother, Cass. Cass feels sorry for her mother's humiliation and confusion, as well as the bee that was swept away by her veil. The bee's life seemed to ebb away, and the world seemed to end. Elaine's interest in Imelda waned, but Cass believed the bee story detracted from her mystique.

The girls at their school were pitied for their English teacher, Ms. Ogle, who was a spinster who had stayed at home to take care of her mother. She was known for her grandiose manner and exotic words, but her actual clothes were not drapey. The girls mocked Ms. Ogle unceasingly, but they also discussed her as a cautionary tale about staying in town and being stuck looking after a relative.

One day, Ms. Ogle was sick, and they saw her at Mass. She was waxy-pale and had a waxy-pale face. They realized that it was their fault that the mockery they poured on her had brought her to collapse.

Ms. Grehan appeared, and she wrote lady poets. She seemed neither a spinster nor tragic, and her relationship status seemed complicated. They found her on social media that night, and they thought she had some connection to the man with the Passat or Fabia. She didn't talk about her past or present, but she did mention Lady Poets, who had glamorous, impassioned lives or torturous, wretched lives.

II

The town of Dublin has experienced a significant decline since the closure of the garage in the next town over. Old ladies would come up to Dickie after Mass, telling him they had said a Novena for him and the motor industry in general. Some steered clear, as if his failure might be catching. Cass, a young woman, feels shame prickle over her, like a hideous second skin, as a new adversity arrives to take the place of her eczema. The crisis has transformed Main Street into a mouthful of cavities, and businesses big and small shuttered in its aftermath.

The collapse of the garage was felt by the townsfolk to be of a different order. Many felt that Imelda was to blame, as Dickie made a fortune and Imelda spent two. Cass' father often worked late, as if the fewer cars the garage sold, the more time he had to spend there.

Imelda's nails chipped, roots showing, driving to Lidl first thing in the morning so she wouldn't run into anyone she knew. She spent her days excavating her walk-in wardrobe, taking pictures of them from every angle, and cursing the online vultures who haggled over every penny like farmers at a mart. Sometimes, they hadn't arrived because Imelda hadn't sent them. Cass told herself the same thing – that in a few months she'd be gone.

However, it has become harder to believe in the future, as the problems at home are so huge and omnivorous that the idea of escaping them, of being somewhere else, has come to seem impossible. Her dad, who had studied at Trinity himself when she was young, no longer reassured her that it would all work out. Cass no longer had Elaine, who no longer invited Cass to her house to study or asked for stories about Imelda. Elaine's interests now lay, specifically, in boys.

Cass knew Elaine knew she would say no, preferring not to go out in town any more than she could help. She did wonder why her friend had chosen to start her new life as a party girl, with her grades down slightly.

Cass, a girl who is often on her own at school, finds herself on her own with Sarah Jane Hinchy. They have always been friends, but after a few weeks, Cass begins to question why they disliked her so much. Sarah Jane, who is known for her bright and interesting personality, often comes out with statements that Cass has never heard of. She also wore a rainbow badge, which she believes is a sign of her belief in everyone's freedom to choose who they want to be and be with.

Cass wonders if the reason she and Elaine had thought Sarah Jane Hinchy was a loser was because they didn't understand what was cool. She also wonders if the things she knew actually made her into an individual, like her rainbow badge. She also wonders if the idea that she might need financial assistance was horrifying to her.

One day, Sarah Jane Hinchy tells Cass about a grant she is applying for, which would pay for rent, food, and books. Cass hesitates, but she decides to go to Sarah Jane's house to watch Throne of Blood, an old Japanese film based on Macbeth. She needs someone to drive her, and her parents are fighting again.

Elaine sends a message to Cass, asking her what's up. Cass doesn't know what it means, but she gets a lift to the Drain. She meets Dickie, who is wearing a ratty old anorak and has a beer can in his hand. An image of him and Sarah Jane Hinchy queuing at the post office flashes into her mind, and she calls over her shoulder, heading for the road into town.

The Drain, a bar in Doran's, is known for its inescapable smell, which is structural and unrecognizable to anyone. The bar is full of underage drinkers, with only a few genuine rockers and a few genuine rockers. Cass, a newcomer, is introduced to Elaine, her best friend since for ever, who is wearing earrings and holding a glass with ice cubes and a slice of lime. Elaine is impressed by Cass's appearance and tries to convince her to wear make-up.

Cass is introduced to Rowan Headley, a droopy boy who used to shout things at her outside the school gates. Rowan is irritated by Cass's presence and asks her to join him at the bar. Cass is hesitant to join, but she sees Elaine standing nearby. Rowan is a major gamer, and Cass tries to focus on her friend's games.

Elaine's friend, Rowan, is also a gamer, playing games like Angry Birds and Agents of Extinction. Cass shares her story of the Chemistry class and hears Rowan kissing her face. The ecstatic pain from behind them makes Cass cries of ecstatic pain.