A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Eimear McBride

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0957185324 ISBN 13: 9780957185326

Publisher: GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS, 2013

Eimear McBride's novel tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother after a tumour leaves him severely brain damaged. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and sensual urges of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, to read A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable - but it is always a revelation.

Review:

Eimear McBride is that old fashioned thing, a genius, in that she writes truth-spilling, uncompromising and brilliant prose... The result is an instant classic an account of Irish girlhood to be set alongside O'Brien's The Country Girls for emotional accuracy and verve, and the sense of its overwhelming necessity. --Anne Enright,The Guardian

This is a simply brilliant book... emotionally raw and at the same time technically astounding. McBride's prose is as haunting and moving as music, and the love story at the heart of the novel between a sister and brother as true and wrenching as any in literature. I can't recommend it highly enough. --Elizabeth McCracken

I was repeatedly (as the author puts it) 'gob impressed'. Writing of this quality is rare and deserves a wide readership... Eimear McBride is a writer of remarkable power and originality --David Collard, Times Literary Supplement

Eimear McBride's ferociously intense and stylistically challenging account of a young girl's coming-of-age in rural Ireland is an astonishing literary debut...--Irish Independent

A brutally honest portrait of a young girl's coming of age, haunted by her relationship with a brother who has suffered a childhood brain tumour... McBride's story-telling is heartfelt and frank and the experience of reading her work is unforgettable.-- We Love This Book

A brutal and brilliant debut novel steps into a young woman s chaotic world... This book will arouse powerful emotions in anyone who accords it the respect of reading with attention. --Sunday Times

Remarkable, harshly satisfying first novel... it is exhilarating to read despite its predominantly negative emotions. Even when there s a strong convergence with Beckett ( Go on go on you can go on ) it seems remarkably unselfconscious, less a matter of stepping in someone s footprints than of sharing a shoe size.... It s hard to imagine another narrative that would justify this way of telling, but perhaps McBride can build another style from scratch for another style of story. That s a project for another day, when this little book is famous. ----London Review of Books

Eimear McBride's ferociously intense and stylistically challenging account of a young girl's coming-of-age in rural Ireland is an astonishing literary debut... --independent.ie

Book Description:

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride is an award-winning experimental debut novel, which tells the story of a young woman's traumatic coming-of-age in rural Ireland, as she struggles with her abusive family and clings to her relationship with her terminally ill brother.