The Lesser Bohemians - Hardcover

McBride, Eimear

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571327850 ISBN 13: 9780571327850

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2016

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2016

From the writer of one of the most memorable debuts of recent years.

An eighteen-year-old Irish girl arrives in London to study drama and falls violently in love with an older actor. This older man has a disturbing past that the young girl is unprepared for. The young girl has a troubling past of her own. This is her story and their story.

The Lesser Bohemians is about sexual passion. It is about innocence and the loss of it. At once epic and exquisitely intimate, it is a celebration of the dark and the light in love.

About this title

Review:

Eimear McBride's energetic, sensuous The Lesser Bohemians.has opened up new possibilities for writing about sex. (Lara Feigel Observer Books of the Year)

After McBride won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, many wondered if her next novel would sustain that same intensely original, stream-of-consciousness prose style. The Lesser Bohemians, about a young Irish woman, recently arrived in London, who falls for an older man, is softer in tone and subject matter but confirms McBride as an exciting literary talent. (Rebecca Rose Financial Times Book of the Year)

Though some found the contrast between her fractured main narrative voice and the inclusion of a more conventionally told story of abuse jarring, with only her second novel she has achieved the near-impossible - finding a new way to write about sex and intimacy. (Justine Jordan Guardian Books of the Year)

Without ever passing judgment, The Lesser Bohemians situates itself at that point of moral, sexual and grammatical uncertainty where ... 'pure is indivisible from its reverse.' For me it is the ability to delve so deeply into all of this, more or less regardless, that makes for the unique talent- the wilful, sensuous generosity - of Eimear McBride. (LRB)

McBride isn't an old-fashioned despot writer. The take-it-or-leave-it arrogance is absent. The confidence and the capacity are as good as anyone's, male or female, but... there's an openness, an inclusivity, a distinct lack of God-almightyness, that makes reading her such a pleasure. (Jeanette Winterson The New York Times Book Review)

McBride does something rather dazzling ... What is new in Eimear McBride's work is the way she uses a fractured interior language to depict sexual life and sexual trauma, to tell the truth about the body. (TLS)

It broke my heart several times over and on each occasion I had to stop to cry. McBride has made something strange and beautiful - well worth its difficulties. (The Evening Standard)

Linguistic joys and surprises on every page... There is a lot of sex in this book: sometimes painful and violent, mostly loving and often ecstatic, with McBride equally able to convey physical sensation and emotional intimacy ... this extraordinary novel deserves all the success of McBride's first. --(The New Statesman)

McBride is always brilliant on her central theme - the paradox that it is shame that makes us behave shamefully. --(The Irish Times)

The Lesser Bohemians" is every bit as stylistically resourceful as "Girl," every bit as urgent and authentic. ... For a second time, Ms. McBride has channeled the mental life of a narrator with an intensity, a lack of mediation, that few authors can achieve. "The Lesser Bohemians" is a full-on sensory experience-and another superlative achievement. --(Wall Street Journal)

Review:

Magnificently accomplished . . . It is hard to summon up adequate superlatives to describe this fierce, touching, boisterously original and life-enhancing account of what it feels like to be young, to leave home and to fall in love., Literary Review

Confirms McBride's status as one of our major novelists . . . the life here radiates through the pages and illuminates ours. , Guardian

Eimear McBride's energetic, sensuous The Lesser Bohemians.has opened up new possibilities for writing about sex. -- Lara Feigel, Observer Books of the Year

The timeless story of a tumultuous love affair . . . For a second time, Ms. McBride has channelled the mental life of a narrator with an intensity, a lack of mediation, that few authors can achieve. The Lesser Bohemians is a full-on sensory experience - and another superlative achievement., Wall Street Journal

After McBride won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, many wondered if her next novel would sustain that same intensely original, stream-of-consciousness prose style. The Lesser Bohemians, about a young Irish woman, recently arrived in London, who falls for an older man, is softer in tone and subject matter but confirms McBride as an exciting literary talent. -- Rebecca Rose, Financial Times Book of the Year

With only her second novel she has achieved the near-impossible - finding a new way to write about sex and intimacy. -- Justine Jordan, Guardian Books of the Year

Without ever passing judgment, The Lesser Bohemians situates itself at that point of moral, sexual and grammatical uncertainty where ... 'pure is indivisible from its reverse.' For me it is the ability to delve so deeply into all of this, more or less regardless, that makes for the unique talent- the wilful, sensuous generosity - of Eimear McBride., LRB

McBride isn't an old-fashioned despot writer. The take-it-or-leave-it arrogance is absent. The confidence and the capacity are as good as anyone's, male or female, but... there's an openness, an inclusivity, a distinct lack of God-almightyness, that makes reading her such a pleasure. -- Jeanette Winterson, The New York Times Book Review

McBride does something rather dazzling ... What is new in Eimear McBride's work is the way she uses a fractured interior language to depict sexual life and sexual trauma, to tell the truth about the body., TLS

McBride has a rare gift as a writer: she combines high modernism, page-turning plot and melodrama into a narrative that will appeal to mainstream audiences and fans of literary avant garde . . . The Lesser Bohemians has been 13 years in the making. But great artistic ideas come to those who wait patiently until they are fully developed., Irish Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0571327850
• ISBN 13: 9780571327850
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320