aul Murray’s second book, Skippy Dies, was one of the standout novels of the previous decade: a riotously entertaining tragicomedy, set in a posh Dublin boys’ school, in which bone-deep sorrow and pathos cut through the teenage hilarity and fart jokes. The Mark and the Void, 2015’s tricksy satire of both the banking crash and the difficult novel-writing business, strayed into metatextual noodling but, with The Bee Sting, Murray is triumphantly back on home turf – troubled
