Oct 24, 2025
Read The Bee Sting in the hopes of redeeming 2023 for the Booker project and it's SO good — so funny and compassionate and sad and deeply, deeply invested in its characters. Excellent writing on a technical level, and stays very Irish in form and sensibility even while writing in four completely different voices. Beautifully structured, fun to read, what a banger. In particular (there's four POV characters), I don't think I can bring to mind a single other example of a teenage girl written so well by an adult man.
#Daybookering#literally how on earth did Prophet Song beat this#it falls short in every single way#EVEN IN ENGAGEMENT WITH POLITICS WHICH ISN'T EVEN THE FOCUS OF BEE STING#the one thing I'd be really curious to read if it's out there is any analysis or thoughts from Travellers#it was a thread in one of the stories and I definitely felt there were elements going over my head through lack of cultural context#and it's not a community with a history of being well treated by the mainstream of Irish lit#next up: Hotel du Lac from 1982
