Kathleen Moran

After reading "Skippy Dies," I couldn't wait for another Paul Murray novel. But wait I did, for "The Bee Sting." Murray's ear for Irish colloquialisms, syntax, and idiom, deposited me in the setting. His use of multiple points of view deepened my sympathy for and exasperation with his characters, all trapped in their own veils of trauma, blinded by their gauzy prejudices, and flailing to finally envision reality. I appreciated Murray's description of dual Eire--rich and poor, educated and superstitious, gentle and violent. Are his characters helpless to alter their fates? As the song goes, "Don't stop believin'!"

O'Farrell knows something of grief, which touched me deeply. That Shakespeare's works never mention plague is a head-scratcher, but perhaps a revelation, too. That O'Farrell weaves so many of Shakespeare's themes and motifs into her imagined tale has excited my puzzle-brain, and makes logical sense, as she worked backwards from his plays, to conjure his actual life. She is brilliant. Her novel in unforgettable.