My second big book of the year was The Big Sting by Paul Murray. I listened to an audiobook that J was kind enough to give to me via Audible. In this post, lots of people said that they liked this book, including Nance and Nicole, so I've spent the last month or so listening to it.
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The Barnes family is going through a rough patch. They used to have money - Dickie, the father, owns a VW dealership - but the economy is not doing him any favors. Instead of finding another job or figuring out what to do to get his business back in the black, Dickie spends his time in the woods preparing for the end of the world. His wife, Imelda, is selling her fancy clothes, jewelry, and even the dining room table on eBay. Cass, the daughter, is about to graduate from high school. She used to be an excellent student, but now she's drinking, sleeping with rando gross guys, and isn't focused on studying. PJ is a twelve-year-old boy who's really struggling with a family that's falling apart and he has a very suspicious online friend.
So, here's the deal. The first third of this book was a real slog. It goes back and forth in time, switching among the four family members with some regularity, and I just did not care. But did you see the list of the people above who like/love this book? I kept going.
And by the end of it I was so eager to know what was going to happen to the Barnes family. Were they ever going to be able to make this work? Why so many secrets? Was everyone going to find out? OH HEAVENS, IS PJ GOING TO BE OKAY?
Section II Part 3 has a decent sports scene. Soccer even. I was invested in the outcome of that soccer game and I am never invested in sports scenes in books.
But, and this is a big but. This book is unrelentingly grim. Someone is always bringing up how terrible the state of the world is. There are graphic scenes of rape and domestic violence. At one point, I grumbled out loud (to the dog, who is my normal audience for these types of things on our daily walks) wondering why J thought I wanted to read a book about a woman reminiscing fondly about her abusive family. So, yes, I did eventually get invested in the inner workings of the Barnes family, but I do not think this is a book for everybody. It's also over 600 pages long and the audiobook is over 26 hours long, so be forewarned that if you do read this book, you're going to be in the bleakness for quite some time.
4/5 stars - Slow start, but then I was all in.
Lines of note:
"There's a hundred and one things could bring it down," Victor says. "Aging infrastructure, storms, solar flares, nuclear attack, unforeseen black swan event. Why would it stay it up? That's the question you should be asking." (Wolf's Lair: Part 1)
I think about the electrical grid and the water supply ALL THE TIME. It would be SO EASY to destroy the way the world works.
You could hardly even call it a village Ballyroe: two pubs and a combine repair shop. (The Widow Bride II: Part 3)
As someone who grew up in a rural area, this resonated with me.
"A drought, a flood, whatever it is, harvests fail and the next year they fail again. Suddenly what you're looking at in Europe is a famine. It might not be what they're calling it on the news, but that's what it is. It's worse in Ireland because we're a little island that imports half its food. Now you've been wise. You've stocked up enough to feed your family for a year. Please God, that'll get you out the other end of it. There you are, sitting at home, patting yourself on the back and thinking that things could be worse when the neighbors come knocking on your door. You want to help them. Of course you do. You're a good man, Dickie Barnes, everyone knows it. But food to feed your family for a year is only enough to feed two families for six months. That's just the beginning. Then the doorbells goes again. More neighbors, more friends, three families, four. You bring them in, too. You can feed everybody for four months, for three months. What happens the next time the bell rings? How many families live within five miles of here would you say? Ten? Twenty? A hundred? You see what I'm driving at? And when you decide you can't feed any more, what happens then? When you stop answering your door, what do you think they do? Starvin' people on your doorstep. You think they're just going to turn around and go home? You think just because they're your friends and neighbors that'll it all stay peaceful and respectful? You think Myanmar and South Sudan weren't all how you do and tidy towns before they started hacking each other to pieces?" (The Clearing VI)
And this is why I'm going to take myself out in the event of a long-lasting catastrophe. (Looks at the news. Realizes that maybe I shouldn't be broadcasting my suicide plans in 2025.)
"Who, listening to that story," he said, "could maintain that progress had failed? Isn't it truer to say that progress needs failure? That progress is what humans do with failure? Failure, bad news, dark times, these are as fuel...progress takes failure and turns it into the future." (The Clearing VII)
I truly hope this is true.
There are days that simply don't happen even when you're in them. The buildings are paper mache. The people are extras. You feel like you're trapped in a filler episode. Throw coffee in someone's face. Wave your tits at the lecturer. Jump in front of a car. By tomorrow it will be all forgotten. But in the moment it is endless like crawling through the desert. (Age of Loneliness I, first Cass chapter)
Doesn't everyone feel this way all the time? Like you're just an extra in a movie that's being made about the more interesting people in your life?
Maybe every era has an atrocity woven into its fabric. Maybe every society is complicit in terrible things and only afterwards gets around to pretending they didn't know. When the kids ask, tell them that no one meant any harm...He can still make out the tide marks from the flood, a once in a century event, that's what you are told. Then came the drought. And that was once in a century, too. Maybe that's how it will go. Instead of one definitive cataclysm, a series of anomalies, each time lasting longer with the stretches of what you call normal life becoming further and further apart until one day it dawns on you that this is normal life now - the flooding, the empty shelves, the candlelight, the networks down, the impassable streets, the sewage in your living room, schools closed, work closed, cuz what use is work now? (Age of Loneliness I, first Dickie chapter)
So grim.
You go to class and discuss famous poems. The poems are full of swans, gorse, blackberries, leopards, elderflowers, mountains, orchards, moonlight, wolves, nightingales, cherry blossoms, bog oak, lily pads, honeybees. Even the brand new ones are jampacked with nature. It's like the poets are not living in the same world as you. You put your hand up and say "isn't it weird that poets just keep going around noticing nature and not ever noticing that nature is shrinking? To read these poems, you would think that the world was as full of nature as it ever was even though in the last forty years so many animals and habitats have been wiped out? How come they don't notice that? How come they don't notice everything that's been annihilated if they're so into noticing things? I look around and all I see is a world being ruined. If poems were true they'd just be about walking through a giant graveyard or a garbage dump." (Age of Loneliness I, second Cass chapter)
Ha ha ha. Maybe she should read the orange poem.
The fact is that people do terrible things every day and the world goes on. They commit atrocities and then resume their ordinary humdrum lives. In real terms, a death is practically non-existent. (Age of Loneliness III)
Bleak.
Things I looked up:
Baffin Island (Wolf's Lair: Part 2) - in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, is the largest island in Canada, the second-largest island in the Americas (behind Greenland), and the fifth-largest island in the world
On the radio, Larry Gogan playing Boyzone on The Golden Hour like everything was normal. (The Widow Bride II: Part 1)
Lorcan "Larry" Gogan was an Irish broadcaster working for RTÉ. His show was The Golden Hour, during which he played old favorites and classic songs from yesteryear. Boyzone was an Irish boy band created in 1993.
The grey squirrel is not native to Ireland. The species was introduced to the country just over a century ago when a dozen arrived in a wicker hamper at Castle Forbes as a wedding present from the Duke of Buckingham. After the wedding breakfast, one of the daughters of the family opened the hamper on the lawn of the estate. the squirrels hopped out and scurried away into the woods. From there, like some fable of colonialism they have spread through almost the entire country. The native red squirrel...has almost vanished. The greys carry a virus, squirrel pox. They are immune to it, but the reds are not. It give them lesions around their mouths so they can't eat. After a week, it's killed them. (The Clearing IV)
This appears to be a true story. Genetic research has determined that all the grey squirrels in Ireland are related back the original 12 animals brought to the island in 1911.
Komorebi is the Japanese word for the kind of light you see in the forest. (The Clearing IV)
“Komorebi” is a Japanese word that means the play of sunlight through leaves. True facts in the book!
Hat mentions:
She spent her days excavating her walk in wardrobe laying out gloves, hats, scarves, blouses, dresses, jeans, skirts...(Sylvias II: Part 1)
He wore a woolly hat all year round. (The Widow Bride II: Part 2)
A baby? Well, that put the tin hat on it, didn't it? (The Widow Bride II: Part 5)
The old library is full of tourists wearing bucket hats carrying shopping bags that carry the college crest, the past for sale (The Clearing II)
brim of her hat (The Clearing V)
It is the weird tree with the witch's hat gouge in its side. (The Clearing VIII)
"Ugh, that hat. Rapist. Klan. Serial killer. Another rapist." (Age of Loneliness I, first Cass chapter)
"That hat is insane. It's like a satellite dish." (Age of Loneliness I, first Cass chapter)
A group in wizard hats traipses noisily over the square. (Age of Loneliness I, first Cass chapter)
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