Join the HCSF Reading Group to discuss The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
In-Person Meeting
Sunday, February 15, 2026
4:30-6:00 pm Pacific
In-Person, San Francisco
Address emailed to registrants the week of the meeting
HCSF Members: Free, but RSVP required
Non-Members: $10 Not a member? Register here for membership!
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HCSF Guidelines for attending in-person events
If you are showing COVID-19 or Flu symptoms, please stay home. This is critical to the health and safety of our staff and communities.
Registration ends Friday, February 13
The Bee Sting
Paul Murray 656 pages 2023
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
New York Times, Washington Post, & Time Magazine Top 10 Books of 2023
Nero Gold Prize, and Nero Book Award for Fiction
Kirkus Prize Finalist for Fiction
NYT: A Rollicking Tragicomic Tale of Unending Family Drama. . .An Irish family faces economic ruin after the 2008 financial crash. And that’s just the start of their troubles.
The New Yorker: The Bee Sting uses. . . revolving viewpoints to reconstruct the past. Although Murray’s swivelling P.O.V. framework evokes family novels by Jonathan Franzen and Maile Meloy, the best comparison may be to William Faulkner, whose experimental language helped differentiate between the voices of the Compson siblings in “The Sound and the Fury,” and who also had a heightened sense of the eeriness of transformative change. Murray shows off his formidable range, immersing us in worlds so distinct and textured that they seem to blot one another out—subjectivity and how its wonderful thickness can lead people astray being one of this author’s preoccupations. Early chapters are propelled by a sustained sense of revelation. As the details pile up, irony, both caustic and elegiac, flourishes in the knowledge gaps between characters.
Questions about our meetings or how we choose our books?
Contact Kirsten Miclau
HCSF Reading Group Organizer
readinggroup@harvardclubsf.org