The Death of Bees

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE 2013 
 
An enchanting and grimly comic tale about love, loss, family and unlikely friendships

This vibrantly imagined novel, by turns hilarious and appalling, is hard to resist.

A black comedy, mixing The Ladykillers with Irvine Welsh’s The Acid House...O’Donnell adeptly balances caustic humour and compassion.

Compelling piece of work... O’Donnell brings a freshness to her narrative, thanks to the brilliantly evoked voices of her two young female protagonists.... Warm without being cosy, explicit without being shocking, and emotive without being schmaltzy, this is a powerful coming-of-age tale with a clear eye for the travails of 21st-century deprived living.

The Death Of Bees is compelling stuff, engaging the emotions from the first page and quickly becoming almost impossible to put down.

A dark, fierce first novel that is a page-turner and a fairy tale turned inside out. I can’t wait to read what she writes next.

Channelling the spirit of Joe Orton…O’Donnell cuts black comedy with a big dollop of sentiment…The Death of Bees steadily draws you into its characters’ lives.

A wonderful dark comic first novel

Lisa O'Donnell won the Orange Screenwriting Prize in 2000 for her screenplay The Wedding Gift. Recently she took a break from screenwriting when she moved to LA with her two children. The Death of Bees is her first novel.

WINNER OF THE COMMONWEALTH BOOK PRIZE 2013 
 
Today is Christmas Eve. Today is my birthday. Today I am fifteen. Today I buried my parents in the backyard. Neither of them were beloved. 
 
Marnie and her little sister Nelly have always been different. Marnie leads a life of smoking, drinking and drugs; Nelly enjoys playing the violin, eating cornflakes with Coke and reading Harry Potter. But on Christmas Eve, the sisters have to join forces and put their differences aside. And when Lennie, the old guy next door, starts to get suspicious, it’s only a matter of time before their terrible secret is discovered.

Lisa O'Donnell

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive read, grounded in a realism which, depicted through a child’s eyes – with that hint of a child’s surreal perception – gathers together violence, humour and love in a most believable way.

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shattered family can remake itself, and Michael's narrative voice is delightful – observant, thoughtful, comical and thoroughly believable.

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as well as all of its terrors, real and imagined … O’Donnell perfectly navigates the distance between what Michael understands and what her readers do … O’Donnell’s great talent is most apparent in her depiction of the gap between Michael’s thoughts and his actions … a moving story that stakes a lasting, and disturbing, emotional claim on her readers.

[A] coming-of-age novel … Closed Doors provides an engaging child’s eye view of a working-class community that is nuanced and insightful.

A sweet and uplifting read that celebrates the messy, complicated business of family. Michael is a lively and endearing narrator.

This wonderful book explores the loss of innocence through a child's eyes. I loved it.

Impressive … A hugely accomplished piece of storytelling.

O'Donnell captures perfectly the distance between perception and reality in a child's view of the world.

A skilfully told story of a boy’s struggle to come to terms with family secrets and their potentially terrible consequences . A sharp, witty and heartbreaking second novel from a dynamic new talent.

Kitty Aldridge, author of A TRICK I LEARNED FROM DEAD MEN

Sweet and sad, this is a coming-of-age story with dark secrets - and love- at its heart.

Karen Campbell, author of THIS IS WHERE I AM

A sensitive and sometimes heart-rending evocation of what it was like to grow up in the 1980s ... Part coming of age novel, part crime novel, Closed Doors will remind all its readers of what it was like to be a child in a world where flawed adults make all the decisions.

A powerful tale of love, the loss of innocence and the importance of family in difficult times by the acclaimed author of The Death of Bees, winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize 2013. 
 
‘There are no strangers in Rothesay, Michael. Everyone knows who you are and always will. It’s a blessing but it’s also a curse.’ 
 
Eleven-year-old Michael Murray is the best at two things: keepy-uppies and keeping secrets. His family think he’s too young to hear grown-up stuff, but he listens at doors; it’s the only way to find out anything. And Michael’s heard a secret, one that might explain the bruises on his mother’s face. 
 
When the whispers at home and on the street become too loud to ignore, Michael begins to wonder if there is an even bigger secret he doesn’t know about. Scared of what might happen if anyone finds out, and desperate for life to return to normal, Michael sets out to piece together the truth. But he also has to prepare for the upcoming talent show, keep an eye out for Dirty Alice, his arch-nemesis from down the street, and avoid eating Granny’s watery stew. 
 
Closed Doors is the startling new novel from the acclaimed author of The Death of Bees. It is a vivid evocation of the fears and freedoms of childhood in the 1980s and a powerful tale of love, the loss of innocence and the importance of family in difficult times.

Lisa O'Donnell

Praise for Closed Doors

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive rea ...

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shatter ...

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … **Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...**

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive rea ...

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shatter ...

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … **Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...**

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive rea ...

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shatter ...

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … **Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...**

Books by Lisa O'Donnell

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Praise for Closed Doors

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive rea ...

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shatter ...

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive rea ...

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shatter ...

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...

The dissonance between what a child narrator knows and what adult readers can make out is fully exploited here to great effect, and is reminiscent of Emma Donoghue’s Room … [A] compulsive rea ...

O’Donnell makes you feel the frustration of an intelligent child who knows he's being kept in the dark … There’s loss of innocence here, but the overwhelming tone is warm and sparky; O’Donnell shows how a shatter ...

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...

Books by Lisa O'Donnell

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … **Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...**

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … **Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...**

Lisa O’Donnell’s dazzling new novel … **Like Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and Black Swan Green by David Mitchell, O’Donnell’s novel effectively evokes the carefree joys of adolescence as ...**