HT reviewer Saudamini Jain picks her favourite read of 2023

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize this year, is the best book I’ve read in years. I can’t remember the last time I binge read anything. I think I had even forgotten that there was such a thing as staying up late guzzling down a whole novel — and this one is at 600-plus pages — several nights in a row. I did not stream whatever show everybody was watching; I did not reach out for Instagram. I read — at first, relating hard; then, disappearing into the characters’ secret lives; all the while, blown away by the form; and also, bursting out laughing often.

A novel told through the perspectives of each member of an Irish family that’s been hit by financial crisis. (Hamish Hamilton)

The Bee Sting is about family and friendship and climate change — and the heaviness of existing in the world now. In the Irish countryside, the once rich Barnes’ family have taken a huge hit during the 2014 financial crisis in Ireland. The novel is told through the successive perspectives of each member of the family — Dickie and Imelda and their children Cass and PJ.