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A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
Eimear McBride's debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. 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 chaotic sexuality 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.
Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny – and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.
Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is moving, funny – and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.
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First published June 17, 2013
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About the author
Eimear McBride
20 books736 followersEimear McBride was born in Liverpool in 1976 to Irish parents. The family moved back to Ireland when she was three. She spent her childhood in Sligo and Mayo. Then, at the age of 17, she moved to London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,515 reviews
June 12, 2023
update : and said gorgeous girls were right to trust her taste 😌
(would i recommend the book to anyone ? perhaps not, as it deals with extremely difficult subjects and the prose is so fragmented that at times it becomes quite difficult to navigate through it. but did i love it ? yes. a hundred times yes.)
gorgeous gorgeous girls watch Dakota Warren's videos and buy every single book she recommends <3
(would i recommend the book to anyone ? perhaps not, as it deals with extremely difficult subjects and the prose is so fragmented that at times it becomes quite difficult to navigate through it. but did i love it ? yes. a hundred times yes.)
gorgeous gorgeous girls watch Dakota Warren's videos and buy every single book she recommends <3
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November 2, 2021How did she do it? I kept asking myself that question as I read. How did the author keep me reading to the end? And not only keep me reading but keep me involved, challenged, rewarded.
If it had been a matter of plot or ending, I’d understand better. But it wasn’t. What plot there was happened early in the book and the ending was written in the beginning, written in the stitches of a head wound, written in green bile, written in a pool of amniotic fluid.
If it was the content that entertained me, all would be clear. But I can’t say that the content was entertaining. No. the content of this book is not ‘entertainment’ in any conventional sense even if the comments on piety scattered throughout relieve the tension a little—because although there is little plot, there is nevertheless huge tension.
If it was a matter of style as in beautiful sentences, there would be no mystery about my fascination either. But there were no beautiful sentences. There were few complete sentences, full-stop. There were full-stops though, only not at the end of sentences. Because the sentences in this book sometimes end before they end. They are breathless, halting, as if they’ve run out of air. Words are transposed, misplaced, sometimes missing entirely. Sense is grasped at, but it is a slimy thing at best, as slippery as waterweed. Sense dances a complex jig with its alter-ego, non-sense, so that we come to see the two as one. There are paradoxes here, no doubt of that.
So why did I admire this book so much? Why can’t I articulate the spell it placed on me? Why is my mind so dark with confusion?
There is a glimmer of light in the darkness: the light is blinking at me, trying to send me a message as if in morse code. The message says: this book is about love.
Only it is no ordinary love, no learned love. This is love that is as innate as breathing, love that is in the blood, love that is there before it is there.
But the under side of such a powerful inheritance is pain. Pain makes victims and victims invite more pain.
So this book is about love and pain. I see the two words in a fierce struggle, hence the tension that contributes to the success of the book for this reader. But the pain word is by far the stronger. It is victim and victor. It calls all the shots. It is the language of the story. It is the story.
This is the story of pain.
And it could not have been told any other way.
If it had been a matter of plot or ending, I’d understand better. But it wasn’t. What plot there was happened early in the book and the ending was written in the beginning, written in the stitches of a head wound, written in green bile, written in a pool of amniotic fluid.
If it was the content that entertained me, all would be clear. But I can’t say that the content was entertaining. No. the content of this book is not ‘entertainment’ in any conventional sense even if the comments on piety scattered throughout relieve the tension a little—because although there is little plot, there is nevertheless huge tension.
If it was a matter of style as in beautiful sentences, there would be no mystery about my fascination either. But there were no beautiful sentences. There were few complete sentences, full-stop. There were full-stops though, only not at the end of sentences. Because the sentences in this book sometimes end before they end. They are breathless, halting, as if they’ve run out of air. Words are transposed, misplaced, sometimes missing entirely. Sense is grasped at, but it is a slimy thing at best, as slippery as waterweed. Sense dances a complex jig with its alter-ego, non-sense, so that we come to see the two as one. There are paradoxes here, no doubt of that.
So why did I admire this book so much? Why can’t I articulate the spell it placed on me? Why is my mind so dark with confusion?
There is a glimmer of light in the darkness: the light is blinking at me, trying to send me a message as if in morse code. The message says: this book is about love.
Only it is no ordinary love, no learned love. This is love that is as innate as breathing, love that is in the blood, love that is there before it is there.
But the under side of such a powerful inheritance is pain. Pain makes victims and victims invite more pain.
So this book is about love and pain. I see the two words in a fierce struggle, hence the tension that contributes to the success of the book for this reader. But the pain word is by far the stronger. It is victim and victor. It calls all the shots. It is the language of the story. It is the story.
This is the story of pain.
And it could not have been told any other way.
August 25, 2013
Let’s get this out the way first: this is the most interesting, impressive and accomplished new novel I’ve read in a very long time. It is not for everyone, and it’s often a difficult read, but it’s one which I found affecting, disturbing and thought-provoking in equal measures.
The core of the book is a first person interior monologue written (or spoken) by an unnamed girl growing up in a small town in Ireland. We follow her in a broad narrative arc which runs from her birth through childhood then into adolescence and her years at university. She is always ‘I’ in this text; the ‘you’ here is addressed to her brother. He is born with a brain tumor which requires surgery to remove, an operation which leaves both physical scars and psychological echoes that haunt him through his youth.
It’s the style which hits you first. It’s the kind of thing which used to be called a ‘stream of consciousness’ even though that hardly works as an adequate descriptor here. There are no speech marks, and next to no commas. The sentences are ungrammatical, broken-up and restitched with the seams showing. They’re peppered with Irish slang and colloquialisms. The flow approximates speech, but the content is frequently far more poetic than anything this character would actually say to anyone. A manifestation of the unconscious, perhaps.
‘Howl winter all through the night that year in the trees where we climbed on and the hedges on the road. No cars here. No one comes. Things crying in the fields for me. Say they want me and coming down the walls for. She’s coming Mammy. Who? The banshee. Don’t be silly. Sure isn’t your brother here? Won’t he mind you if anything comes along. Should I close the door or leave it open? I don’t know. Shut bad out or shut it in?’
There are echoes of James Kelman and David Peace, though it’s not quite the same thing – I think the writing here is finer than the latter in particular, richer and less regimented – and above all there’s the presence of James Joyce, in particular the final chapter of ‘Ulysses’ and pretty much the whole of ‘Finnegans Wake’. McBride doesn’t go quite so far with the punning, but there’s something about the whole approach to language which is similar. (But don’t let that put you off; it’s far more accessible than that.)
I don’t want to describe too much of what happens. You could summarise the plot of this book in a few lines; what drama there is occurs only in terms of incidents and accidents, accumulations of patterned behaviour which build up to something ultimately indescribable. Let’s put it this way: the girl’s mother is not a nice person. This may not be her fault. The father is absent throughout, mentioned sometimes in passing but never appearing in the text. The mother is a Catholic, but a bad Christian. She beats her children. She forms opinions of them which stifle them both, especially later in life, and ultimately they become closer to one another than they do to her.
And then there’s her uncle. She and he develop a relationship in her adolescence which wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It’s the precipitating event which sparks off a stream of encounters with boys in her later years at school. It’s hard to read about, this stuff, and I think intentionally so. She is not a victim, and at times there is even a disturbing edge of complicity to her actions in the strange, hostile world around her. In her own words, she is: ‘Calm sliding down into my boat and pushing out to sin.’
It’s a dark book, but it is not as dour as you might think; this isn’t one to be filed amongst the misery memoirs associated with popular Irish fiction ever since ‘Angela’s Ashes’ and the like. There are moments of intense and real beauty here, often moments in which our protagonist finds herself alone or with her brother:
‘You are saying doesn’t it look like a when we were little day? High sky and snackish air. It does. We walk so slow for you. Hey look I say, what about that? Will you look at that? What? Up there. See what I’m pointing at. A load of ducks I see them. No. Geese. Swans. Yes. Honking. I like that. V over me. V off to some reservoir I say. To the lake. Sure we’ll see them when we get there. Fat bellies on them. Full of crusts and slugs do they eat them? I don’t know. I’d say I would. Pâté they are for birds.’
I suppose the only criticism I can offer of this book is that taken as a whole, it offers next to no actual lasting happiness in the life of the narrator. I know this seems somewhat contradictory given what I just wrote, but in some respects it seems like the book enters early on into a kind of downward spiral from which there can only be one respite.
In that regards it seems to me less a realistic account and more like something ambiguous, almost fantastic. And this in turn becomes what is perhaps the most admirable thing about the book for me: I never had the sense that the author believed they owed the reader a thing in terms of a totally consistent and balanced view of the world. The entire book is recounted as if part of one long, breathless artistic vision. Which is amazing, when you think about it.
The core of the book is a first person interior monologue written (or spoken) by an unnamed girl growing up in a small town in Ireland. We follow her in a broad narrative arc which runs from her birth through childhood then into adolescence and her years at university. She is always ‘I’ in this text; the ‘you’ here is addressed to her brother. He is born with a brain tumor which requires surgery to remove, an operation which leaves both physical scars and psychological echoes that haunt him through his youth.
It’s the style which hits you first. It’s the kind of thing which used to be called a ‘stream of consciousness’ even though that hardly works as an adequate descriptor here. There are no speech marks, and next to no commas. The sentences are ungrammatical, broken-up and restitched with the seams showing. They’re peppered with Irish slang and colloquialisms. The flow approximates speech, but the content is frequently far more poetic than anything this character would actually say to anyone. A manifestation of the unconscious, perhaps.
‘Howl winter all through the night that year in the trees where we climbed on and the hedges on the road. No cars here. No one comes. Things crying in the fields for me. Say they want me and coming down the walls for. She’s coming Mammy. Who? The banshee. Don’t be silly. Sure isn’t your brother here? Won’t he mind you if anything comes along. Should I close the door or leave it open? I don’t know. Shut bad out or shut it in?’
There are echoes of James Kelman and David Peace, though it’s not quite the same thing – I think the writing here is finer than the latter in particular, richer and less regimented – and above all there’s the presence of James Joyce, in particular the final chapter of ‘Ulysses’ and pretty much the whole of ‘Finnegans Wake’. McBride doesn’t go quite so far with the punning, but there’s something about the whole approach to language which is similar. (But don’t let that put you off; it’s far more accessible than that.)
I don’t want to describe too much of what happens. You could summarise the plot of this book in a few lines; what drama there is occurs only in terms of incidents and accidents, accumulations of patterned behaviour which build up to something ultimately indescribable. Let’s put it this way: the girl’s mother is not a nice person. This may not be her fault. The father is absent throughout, mentioned sometimes in passing but never appearing in the text. The mother is a Catholic, but a bad Christian. She beats her children. She forms opinions of them which stifle them both, especially later in life, and ultimately they become closer to one another than they do to her.
And then there’s her uncle. She and he develop a relationship in her adolescence which wasn’t quite what I was expecting. It’s the precipitating event which sparks off a stream of encounters with boys in her later years at school. It’s hard to read about, this stuff, and I think intentionally so. She is not a victim, and at times there is even a disturbing edge of complicity to her actions in the strange, hostile world around her. In her own words, she is: ‘Calm sliding down into my boat and pushing out to sin.’
It’s a dark book, but it is not as dour as you might think; this isn’t one to be filed amongst the misery memoirs associated with popular Irish fiction ever since ‘Angela’s Ashes’ and the like. There are moments of intense and real beauty here, often moments in which our protagonist finds herself alone or with her brother:
‘You are saying doesn’t it look like a when we were little day? High sky and snackish air. It does. We walk so slow for you. Hey look I say, what about that? Will you look at that? What? Up there. See what I’m pointing at. A load of ducks I see them. No. Geese. Swans. Yes. Honking. I like that. V over me. V off to some reservoir I say. To the lake. Sure we’ll see them when we get there. Fat bellies on them. Full of crusts and slugs do they eat them? I don’t know. I’d say I would. Pâté they are for birds.’
I suppose the only criticism I can offer of this book is that taken as a whole, it offers next to no actual lasting happiness in the life of the narrator. I know this seems somewhat contradictory given what I just wrote, but in some respects it seems like the book enters early on into a kind of downward spiral from which there can only be one respite.
In that regards it seems to me less a realistic account and more like something ambiguous, almost fantastic. And this in turn becomes what is perhaps the most admirable thing about the book for me: I never had the sense that the author believed they owed the reader a thing in terms of a totally consistent and balanced view of the world. The entire book is recounted as if part of one long, breathless artistic vision. Which is amazing, when you think about it.
September 14, 2025
UNA SCRITTURA LASCIATA A METÀ
Eimear McBride odia un segno di punteggiatura che io invece amo molto: la virgola. Non ne fa mai uso, via, sparita qualsiasi virgola. In realtà, una dozzina le ho incontrate, e ogni volta mi sono chiesto se fossero volute oppure fossero invece refusi.
Lei, al contrario di me, ama il punto interrogativo. Ne cosparge la pagina.
Entrambi amiamo il punto fermo, ma io detesto l’uso che ne fa lei: nelle sue pagine arriva sempre troppo presto, prima che la frase sia ultimata, e quindi, ogni discorso rimane a metà, incompleto. Arriva anche a scandire ogni singola parola: e se una frase ha otto parole e ci sono otto punti, sembra che tutti vogliano continuamente scandire, o sottolineare, e io come devo regolarmi, per quale interpretazione opto?
Dopo il primo capitolo – quattro pagine – credo, ma non sono certo, che l’io parlante – decisamente più che narrante – sia un feto che viene al mondo. Parla un po’ fra sé e sé, ma si rivolge anche a qualcun altro, probabilmente la madre ma forse il fratellino maggiore, quello già nato. La madre però ogni tanto sembra strapparle la parola e diventare lei la narratrice. Boh, non è mica che ne sono certo.
E se davvero l’io parlante corrisponde al feto – femmina – perché mai parla già così, come un adulto super scafato durante una sessione di psicoanalisi in preda a qualche allucinogeno?
Dopo duecentocinquanta pagine, se ho capito quanto McBride vuole dire – più che raccontare – si tratta di un “io” femminile che seguiamo, a partire dal ventre materno, lo seguiamo dal feto al cadavere. Un “io” che rimane senza nome, ovviamente, un lusso da non concedere al lettore. Il tutto si svolge non si sa né quando – anche se presumibilmente non prima del 1981 visto che si nomina Medjugorje - né dove, ma si immagina si tratti dell’Irlanda,
E quel tutto non fa certo buona pubblicità al paese.
Per inciso, il giorno dopo che il libro ha vinto il premio Bailey – che immagino sia un premio importante in Irlanda - è stato reso noto che una "casa per madri e bambini" di Galway, gestita dalle suore del Bon Secours, ha gettato per 40 anni nella fossa settica dell’istituto circa 800 dei loro figli, ovviamente morti, onde evitare l'imbarazzo dei certificati di morte.
Alla faccia della santa madre chiesa.
Ergo, perché mai McBride dovrebbe raccontare una storia meno dura e terribile e cruenta? Se solo la raccontasse invece di lasciarla intuire…
Nel grembo materno, "io" stringe una relazione - una sorta di incesto dell'anima - con un fratello - e anche questo "tu" rimane senza nome, non vorremo mica dare un aiutino al lettore eh – fratello di due anni più grande di lei, il cui cervello è stato divorato e la sua vita sarà accorciata da un cancro. "Io" viene brutalizzata dalla "mamma", violentata da uno zio e terrorizzata spiritualmente dalla chiesa cattolica. Muore un nonno. "Io" ottiene un'istruzione superiore ma si sottopone, in modo punitivo, alle più basse umiliazioni sessuali. Si uccide.
Questa non è una "narrazione": è un insieme di indizi sulla scena di un romanzo.
Secondo tentativo con Eimear McBride e secondo fiasco. Seconda volta che mi trovo davanti a un flusso di coscienza che mi fa detestare il flusso di coscienza che io invece di solito apprezzo. Il fatto è che non si tratta di vero flusso di coscienza, non c’è nulla che scorra, tutto invece s’impunta, e non c’è coscienza, si tratta casomai di flusso d’incoscienza: McBride affastella pensieri incoerenti, impressioni sensoriali, accenni di dialogo mentale. Ogni volta che la lettura trova flusso e ritmo, McBride arriva presto a interrompere e spezzare.
Prosa sub-verbale, uno sbrodolamento frantumato, tritato, in punta di coltello come una tartare che si rispetti, ma non un romanzo.
La sensazione è che il titolo avrebbe dovuto essere cambiato in: una scrittura lasciata a metà.
Eimear McBride odia un segno di punteggiatura che io invece amo molto: la virgola. Non ne fa mai uso, via, sparita qualsiasi virgola. In realtà, una dozzina le ho incontrate, e ogni volta mi sono chiesto se fossero volute oppure fossero invece refusi.
Lei, al contrario di me, ama il punto interrogativo. Ne cosparge la pagina.
Entrambi amiamo il punto fermo, ma io detesto l’uso che ne fa lei: nelle sue pagine arriva sempre troppo presto, prima che la frase sia ultimata, e quindi, ogni discorso rimane a metà, incompleto. Arriva anche a scandire ogni singola parola: e se una frase ha otto parole e ci sono otto punti, sembra che tutti vogliano continuamente scandire, o sottolineare, e io come devo regolarmi, per quale interpretazione opto?
Dopo il primo capitolo – quattro pagine – credo, ma non sono certo, che l’io parlante – decisamente più che narrante – sia un feto che viene al mondo. Parla un po’ fra sé e sé, ma si rivolge anche a qualcun altro, probabilmente la madre ma forse il fratellino maggiore, quello già nato. La madre però ogni tanto sembra strapparle la parola e diventare lei la narratrice. Boh, non è mica che ne sono certo.
E se davvero l’io parlante corrisponde al feto – femmina – perché mai parla già così, come un adulto super scafato durante una sessione di psicoanalisi in preda a qualche allucinogeno?
Dopo duecentocinquanta pagine, se ho capito quanto McBride vuole dire – più che raccontare – si tratta di un “io” femminile che seguiamo, a partire dal ventre materno, lo seguiamo dal feto al cadavere. Un “io” che rimane senza nome, ovviamente, un lusso da non concedere al lettore. Il tutto si svolge non si sa né quando – anche se presumibilmente non prima del 1981 visto che si nomina Medjugorje - né dove, ma si immagina si tratti dell’Irlanda,
E quel tutto non fa certo buona pubblicità al paese.
Per inciso, il giorno dopo che il libro ha vinto il premio Bailey – che immagino sia un premio importante in Irlanda - è stato reso noto che una "casa per madri e bambini" di Galway, gestita dalle suore del Bon Secours, ha gettato per 40 anni nella fossa settica dell’istituto circa 800 dei loro figli, ovviamente morti, onde evitare l'imbarazzo dei certificati di morte.
Alla faccia della santa madre chiesa.
Ergo, perché mai McBride dovrebbe raccontare una storia meno dura e terribile e cruenta? Se solo la raccontasse invece di lasciarla intuire…
Nel grembo materno, "io" stringe una relazione - una sorta di incesto dell'anima - con un fratello - e anche questo "tu" rimane senza nome, non vorremo mica dare un aiutino al lettore eh – fratello di due anni più grande di lei, il cui cervello è stato divorato e la sua vita sarà accorciata da un cancro. "Io" viene brutalizzata dalla "mamma", violentata da uno zio e terrorizzata spiritualmente dalla chiesa cattolica. Muore un nonno. "Io" ottiene un'istruzione superiore ma si sottopone, in modo punitivo, alle più basse umiliazioni sessuali. Si uccide.
Questa non è una "narrazione": è un insieme di indizi sulla scena di un romanzo.
Secondo tentativo con Eimear McBride e secondo fiasco. Seconda volta che mi trovo davanti a un flusso di coscienza che mi fa detestare il flusso di coscienza che io invece di solito apprezzo. Il fatto è che non si tratta di vero flusso di coscienza, non c’è nulla che scorra, tutto invece s’impunta, e non c’è coscienza, si tratta casomai di flusso d’incoscienza: McBride affastella pensieri incoerenti, impressioni sensoriali, accenni di dialogo mentale. Ogni volta che la lettura trova flusso e ritmo, McBride arriva presto a interrompere e spezzare.
Prosa sub-verbale, uno sbrodolamento frantumato, tritato, in punta di coltello come una tartare che si rispetti, ma non un romanzo.
La sensazione è che il titolo avrebbe dovuto essere cambiato in: una scrittura lasciata a metà.
October 9, 2017
That just was life.
Usually when people talk about ‘stream-of-consciousness’ writing, they mean little more than that there are a lot of run-on sentences and not many full stops. Eimear McBride is one of the very few writers to have really wrestled the English language into a new form to tell her story. Here there are many full stops, but they occur in the middle of. During. Splitting thoughts and. Off shearing different slices of idea. Sentences fracture, glance against one another and refract in different directions. The effect is kaleidoscopic, suggesting by turns the clouded thought process of disease, the raw edginess of compulsion, or the mangled simultaneity of regular daily anxieties.
Within the coarse immediacy, McBride scatters these little nuggets of poetry: amid the digs of four a.m. There are many flashes of Irish, and creative English coinages (she describes ‘high sky and snackish air’). Multiple voices intersect within paragraphs, even sentences. And McBride uses these effects quite deliberately in the service of her story, which concerns childhood abuse, family trauma, addictive compulsions, sexual self-destructiveness. The overall effect is something like James Joyce meets Sarah Kane.
Usually I avoid books about these subjects, and I especially resent being made to relive the worst moments of someone's trauma when I feel it's mainly a form of therapy for the author. It's not like that here. Though the book deals with some very upsetting issues, it never asks for sympathy. The narrator of Girl is not a victim: she makes her own choices, even if we often find them difficult to understand. Sometimes, despite the dense prose, she can be ruthlessly direct (‘Hurt me. Until I am outside pain,’ she says at one point; and elsewhere, ‘The answer to every single question is Fuck’). And the central relationship she has with her sick brother is as raw, as real, as anything you'll read.
I won't pretend this is a light read; it's pretty gruelling. But you put it down convinced that you've read something great.
Usually when people talk about ‘stream-of-consciousness’ writing, they mean little more than that there are a lot of run-on sentences and not many full stops. Eimear McBride is one of the very few writers to have really wrestled the English language into a new form to tell her story. Here there are many full stops, but they occur in the middle of. During. Splitting thoughts and. Off shearing different slices of idea. Sentences fracture, glance against one another and refract in different directions. The effect is kaleidoscopic, suggesting by turns the clouded thought process of disease, the raw edginess of compulsion, or the mangled simultaneity of regular daily anxieties.
Crumbs on the carpets and insects bite my back I don't care for. Nicer is not what I am after. Fuck me softly fuck me quick is all the same once done to me. And washing in their rusted baths and flushing brown with limescale loos amid the digs of four a.m. before I put my knickers on. Say stay the night but I am gone. Down back stairs fag glued lip sore on and wait for, get the night bus home.
Within the coarse immediacy, McBride scatters these little nuggets of poetry: amid the digs of four a.m. There are many flashes of Irish, and creative English coinages (she describes ‘high sky and snackish air’). Multiple voices intersect within paragraphs, even sentences. And McBride uses these effects quite deliberately in the service of her story, which concerns childhood abuse, family trauma, addictive compulsions, sexual self-destructiveness. The overall effect is something like James Joyce meets Sarah Kane.
He hurt my arms. You open your legs. I. I've haven't stopped thinking about you for a moment he says. Shame I didn't think of you at all. Do it. Not until. What? You hurt me. He pull by the hair. How you like it? Does that hurt? No. Then what? I want. Words drown like water. Make me know what you mean. What? When you miss me. What words are when. Get. Jesus. Over. He goes somewhere else inside. Does that hurt? Yes. A lot. A lot and relieves me for a while.
Usually I avoid books about these subjects, and I especially resent being made to relive the worst moments of someone's trauma when I feel it's mainly a form of therapy for the author. It's not like that here. Though the book deals with some very upsetting issues, it never asks for sympathy. The narrator of Girl is not a victim: she makes her own choices, even if we often find them difficult to understand. Sometimes, despite the dense prose, she can be ruthlessly direct (‘Hurt me. Until I am outside pain,’ she says at one point; and elsewhere, ‘The answer to every single question is Fuck’). And the central relationship she has with her sick brother is as raw, as real, as anything you'll read.
I won't pretend this is a light read; it's pretty gruelling. But you put it down convinced that you've read something great.
February 10, 2016
read this for my 2016 Book Challenge #12: A book rec'd by someone who does not know your taste in books.
McBride is not a writer. When a writer writes a book and it's rejected for nine years, they spend those nine years writing other books and getting them out into the world. They hold that initial story close to their heart as a treasured ugly child. Maybe it gets published later in their career, maybe not. But a writer does not stop writing because one of their stories has not yet found its home. Sometimes that home is as a footnote to a career, an intellectual curiosity.
The book comes across as personal catharsis, and not as a text written with a reader in mind. There's a specific type of literature that sneers at something as plebeian as entertaining or enlightening a reader. It throws in incest and despair because the author is speaking about the human condition, see. This is that book.
It's a very young book. The author wrote it in the first flush of their life, in that space where everything you feel is so very important, and tragic, and you submit an piece to your sophomore creative writing class about having sex with a stranger in a fetid alleyway in the depths of a sticky, green summer, because you're not like those other students, you're special and deep and you want to speak about what's real.
Anyone who has read college papers has read these. It's the penance college lecturers do so the public doesn't have to (they will accept gifts of gratitude in the form of chocolate, thank you). But a writer listens to feedback, gets through this stage, and starts turning out stories people want to read i.e. good literature. Or popular genre fiction. Or both. Sometimes in the same book.
McBride hasn't yet got through that stage, because this was it. Her only baby. She hasn't become a storyteller. There's time for her yet, if she can get over having had this published. I wish her a long and happy career, but I do not rec this book.
**
Part of me is suspicious my co worker rec'd this because she suspects who I am on GR and she wants to confirm if it's me. If so, *waves*. Yes. It is.
McBride is not a writer. When a writer writes a book and it's rejected for nine years, they spend those nine years writing other books and getting them out into the world. They hold that initial story close to their heart as a treasured ugly child. Maybe it gets published later in their career, maybe not. But a writer does not stop writing because one of their stories has not yet found its home. Sometimes that home is as a footnote to a career, an intellectual curiosity.
The book comes across as personal catharsis, and not as a text written with a reader in mind. There's a specific type of literature that sneers at something as plebeian as entertaining or enlightening a reader. It throws in incest and despair because the author is speaking about the human condition, see. This is that book.
It's a very young book. The author wrote it in the first flush of their life, in that space where everything you feel is so very important, and tragic, and you submit an piece to your sophomore creative writing class about having sex with a stranger in a fetid alleyway in the depths of a sticky, green summer, because you're not like those other students, you're special and deep and you want to speak about what's real.
Anyone who has read college papers has read these. It's the penance college lecturers do so the public doesn't have to (they will accept gifts of gratitude in the form of chocolate, thank you). But a writer listens to feedback, gets through this stage, and starts turning out stories people want to read i.e. good literature. Or popular genre fiction. Or both. Sometimes in the same book.
McBride hasn't yet got through that stage, because this was it. Her only baby. She hasn't become a storyteller. There's time for her yet, if she can get over having had this published. I wish her a long and happy career, but I do not rec this book.
**
Part of me is suspicious my co worker rec'd this because she suspects who I am on GR and she wants to confirm if it's me. If so, *waves*. Yes. It is.
October 13, 2015
Brutal and disturbing. A Cerberus of a novel, a hellhound gone mad, one that has turned to dragging victims to the other side. It takes you in its bloody jaws, shakes and strips the skin off your cosy self-satisfaction and easy comfortable complacency, and throws you out on the shores of the Styx, exhausted, shaking, raw. Mouth dry, heart pounding.
Raw, raw. Unflinching. Heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching, visceral. It is hard, hard to read, hard to understand and harder to bear. The words on the page defy conventional means of creating meaning and fuse into a vital, throbbing, thrilling flood that washes the adventurous reader onto a stranger, darker shore. It is hard to get back to the light, blinking and breathless.
And the mother:
Girls. Take care of the girls.
Raw, raw. Unflinching. Heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching, visceral. It is hard, hard to read, hard to understand and harder to bear. The words on the page defy conventional means of creating meaning and fuse into a vital, throbbing, thrilling flood that washes the adventurous reader onto a stranger, darker shore. It is hard to get back to the light, blinking and breathless.
They polyester tight-packed womanhood in pink or blue or black and green coats if the day has rain. Their boots in the hallway, crusty with cow dung or wet muck. If in Sunday skirts, every pleat a landscape of their grown-up bodies. Tired. Under-touched. Flesh having run all night after the cows. Flesh carry sacks of turf up lanes from the shed and spurt out child and child and child. Son he has wanted. Girl he did not.
And the mother:
So now your good kind brother is gone and God forgive me but it's true. I almost wish it was you lying there in that box. You. And not. My. Son.
Girls. Take care of the girls.
March 7, 2020
This is a 5-star book, though I'm not certain it was a 5-star experience, yet I never wanted to stop reading it. The unusual (to say the least) prose is brilliant and surprisingly 'readable,' even as it narrates what the unnamed girl experiences as she experiences it (a simplistic example: the narrator doesn't sequentially open a door; she experiences the door before she opens it, so a sentence ends "...door open."). At the two junctures where I expected events to happen that did happen, the language was even more disjointed (though still making complete sense), brilliant and perfect for the horror that was taking place. So, yes, 5 stars.
*
During the reading of this, I was reminded of how scary a read the nonfiction Reviving Ophelia was for me way-back-when. This is another reminder that when girls have so-called gone-to-the-bad and are so-called acting-out, there is a reason.
*
I applaud Coffee House Press (their mantra is "Literature is not the same thing as publishing.") for taking a chance on this unorthodox novel; and I was reminded of another small press -- Bellevue Literary Press -- that published another arguably groundbreaking debut novel: Paul Harding's Tinkers.
*
During the reading of this, I was reminded of how scary a read the nonfiction Reviving Ophelia was for me way-back-when. This is another reminder that when girls have so-called gone-to-the-bad and are so-called acting-out, there is a reason.
*
I applaud Coffee House Press (their mantra is "Literature is not the same thing as publishing.") for taking a chance on this unorthodox novel; and I was reminded of another small press -- Bellevue Literary Press -- that published another arguably groundbreaking debut novel: Paul Harding's Tinkers.
September 25, 2014
Americans finally have a chance to see what all the fuss is about over Eimear McBride’s “A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.” Its success has the makings of a minor literary legend. The Irish writer’s debut novel languished for nine years without a publisher until it was finally released last year by a tiny new press in Norwich, England: Gallery Beggar, “a company specifically set-up to act as a sponsor to writers who have struggled to either find or retain a publisher.” Soaring from that humble beginning, “A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing” went on to win the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize — about $100,000 in prize money.
Hearing of those accolades abroad, you might assume that the novel sparked a bidding war among big New York publishers.
You would be wrong.
If a book like Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch” represents the seamless confluence of critical and popular tastes, McBride’s book represents their complete disconnect.
“A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing” is an extraordinarily demanding novel that will fascinate dozens of American readers. The narrator is a young woman beset by unending emotional betrayals and physical abuse. Her father abandons the family in the opening pages. Her mother is a fanatical Roman Catholic who vacillates between begging the Virgin Mary for blessings and shrieking at her daughter for being a slut. Her brother has brain cancer. A relative starts sexually abusing her when she’s 13. Later, strangers rape and beat her. And only more incest and anonymous sex can blot out the pain of her life.
I’m not cherry-picking the low points here; this is the novel’s unrelenting content. It’s a staggering emotional ordeal that draws us into the world of a woman forced to endure a knife drawer of horrors that would slice up anyone’s sanity.
Which brings us to the unusual language of “A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.” McBride writes in a stream-of-consciousness style that reflects her narrator’s fragmented and damaged psyche. It’s a method as clever and effective as it is opaque and confusing. Here she is when she finally gets away from mother-harpy and moves into her own place:
“City all that black in my lungs. In my nose. Like I am smoking am not but still. I’ll have a creaky bed up in some woman’s house. For too much a week, that I don’t guess. Will do. Maybe soon. Unpack my socks and. Oh. That’s being lonely. Lying here. Head and feet not knowing where they’ve come to. The rest and. Both of ye. And shocking. That.”
Dialogue comes to us mashed up like this:
“In the morning. Stung my eyes. Awake now? Are you alright? I’m a. And what have you to tell? What? God you look desperate are you she says laying on my bed. Wag fag at me. What have you been up to? He? Who? Just I. I. Jesus Christ you know what. My grandfather died. Well that isn’t the look of you you have. He? Who? Yes. Who? What? I just need a spot of sleep. Well there’s a cup of tea there. Thanks. And I’m staying the week. Oh right.”
In some sections, the novel’s halting, elliptical style conveys confusion and terror more honestly than coherent paragraphs ever could. McBride has perfected a language commensurate with the scrambled strains of shame, pain and desire felt by a girl being raped by her uncle. Her garbled sentences capture the lacunae of intoxication. Her phrases, constantly glancing, retreating and returning, enact the experience of hearing and ignoring, staring at and looking away from the person you love most dying. Even amid this jangle of words and phrases, there are moments that come into horrifying focus. I’ll never forget the scene in which her brother listens carefully to the hospice doctor and then asks, “When am I going to get well?”
You either let this strange novel teach you how to read it and grow accustomed to its impressionistic voice, or you suffer through what feels like a migraine in print. But I’m not convinced that pride of endurance is sufficient reward for completing “A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.” Critics are wont to call McBride’s style Joycean, but skeptical I that. Judging. What is is. Who?
It’s fair to note that not all big novels with lots of eccentric characters are necessarily Dickensian, and not all novels written in garbled syntax are necessarily Joycean. In 1987, the late Irish poet Christopher Nolan published a gorgeous autobiography called “Under the Eye of the Clock,” and the remarkable lyricism of that book reflected his unusual relationship to language as a person with cerebral palsy who could not speak. But there was nothing crippled about his ingenious sentences, nothing handicapped about his inventive style. Even Caliban, that half-formed creature in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” who “wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish,” is given speeches of eloquent rage and despair. But McBride is so quick to fracture her phrasing that she rarely sustains such moments. I appreciate the stylistic theory behind her tortured style, but I also couldn’t help but wish that these linguistic shenanigans would get out of the way once in a while and let this plaintive story come through unimpeded.
More sophisticated readers will claim that I’m standing in front of a Jackson Pollock and asking for more patches of Rembrandt, to which I can answer only by quoting this passage toward the end: “Stick it ionthe don’tinside wwherhtewaterisswimming htroughmynoseandmouth throughmysense myorgands sthroughmythrough. That. A. My brain. He. Like. Now. Ithink i smell of woodwherethe river hits the lakebrownwashfoamy up the bank side Isee allcreaturesthere fish ducklings inthespring spring water going throughmyveins sinktheocean seeoutfar my salt my. Sea firsttime. Ahhhh pisses.”
Easy for her to say.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
Hearing of those accolades abroad, you might assume that the novel sparked a bidding war among big New York publishers.
You would be wrong.
If a book like Donna Tartt’s “The Goldfinch” represents the seamless confluence of critical and popular tastes, McBride’s book represents their complete disconnect.
“A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing” is an extraordinarily demanding novel that will fascinate dozens of American readers. The narrator is a young woman beset by unending emotional betrayals and physical abuse. Her father abandons the family in the opening pages. Her mother is a fanatical Roman Catholic who vacillates between begging the Virgin Mary for blessings and shrieking at her daughter for being a slut. Her brother has brain cancer. A relative starts sexually abusing her when she’s 13. Later, strangers rape and beat her. And only more incest and anonymous sex can blot out the pain of her life.
I’m not cherry-picking the low points here; this is the novel’s unrelenting content. It’s a staggering emotional ordeal that draws us into the world of a woman forced to endure a knife drawer of horrors that would slice up anyone’s sanity.
Which brings us to the unusual language of “A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.” McBride writes in a stream-of-consciousness style that reflects her narrator’s fragmented and damaged psyche. It’s a method as clever and effective as it is opaque and confusing. Here she is when she finally gets away from mother-harpy and moves into her own place:
“City all that black in my lungs. In my nose. Like I am smoking am not but still. I’ll have a creaky bed up in some woman’s house. For too much a week, that I don’t guess. Will do. Maybe soon. Unpack my socks and. Oh. That’s being lonely. Lying here. Head and feet not knowing where they’ve come to. The rest and. Both of ye. And shocking. That.”
Dialogue comes to us mashed up like this:
“In the morning. Stung my eyes. Awake now? Are you alright? I’m a. And what have you to tell? What? God you look desperate are you she says laying on my bed. Wag fag at me. What have you been up to? He? Who? Just I. I. Jesus Christ you know what. My grandfather died. Well that isn’t the look of you you have. He? Who? Yes. Who? What? I just need a spot of sleep. Well there’s a cup of tea there. Thanks. And I’m staying the week. Oh right.”
In some sections, the novel’s halting, elliptical style conveys confusion and terror more honestly than coherent paragraphs ever could. McBride has perfected a language commensurate with the scrambled strains of shame, pain and desire felt by a girl being raped by her uncle. Her garbled sentences capture the lacunae of intoxication. Her phrases, constantly glancing, retreating and returning, enact the experience of hearing and ignoring, staring at and looking away from the person you love most dying. Even amid this jangle of words and phrases, there are moments that come into horrifying focus. I’ll never forget the scene in which her brother listens carefully to the hospice doctor and then asks, “When am I going to get well?”
You either let this strange novel teach you how to read it and grow accustomed to its impressionistic voice, or you suffer through what feels like a migraine in print. But I’m not convinced that pride of endurance is sufficient reward for completing “A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.” Critics are wont to call McBride’s style Joycean, but skeptical I that. Judging. What is is. Who?
It’s fair to note that not all big novels with lots of eccentric characters are necessarily Dickensian, and not all novels written in garbled syntax are necessarily Joycean. In 1987, the late Irish poet Christopher Nolan published a gorgeous autobiography called “Under the Eye of the Clock,” and the remarkable lyricism of that book reflected his unusual relationship to language as a person with cerebral palsy who could not speak. But there was nothing crippled about his ingenious sentences, nothing handicapped about his inventive style. Even Caliban, that half-formed creature in Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” who “wouldst gabble like / A thing most brutish,” is given speeches of eloquent rage and despair. But McBride is so quick to fracture her phrasing that she rarely sustains such moments. I appreciate the stylistic theory behind her tortured style, but I also couldn’t help but wish that these linguistic shenanigans would get out of the way once in a while and let this plaintive story come through unimpeded.
More sophisticated readers will claim that I’m standing in front of a Jackson Pollock and asking for more patches of Rembrandt, to which I can answer only by quoting this passage toward the end: “Stick it ionthe don’tinside wwherhtewaterisswimming htroughmynoseandmouth throughmysense myorgands sthroughmythrough. That. A. My brain. He. Like. Now. Ithink i smell of woodwherethe river hits the lakebrownwashfoamy up the bank side Isee allcreaturesthere fish ducklings inthespring spring water going throughmyveins sinktheocean seeoutfar my salt my. Sea firsttime. Ahhhh pisses.”
Easy for her to say.
This review first appeared in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 23, 2021
A Girl is a Half Formed thing is written in non-grammatical fractured prose. It tells the story of a girl's sexual awakening, her experience of her brother's terminal illness and her relationship with her mother and the Catholic church. The first half was brilliant. The fragmented riotous prose suited the struggle of articulating the changes that take place in a young girl's body. At fourteen the narrator will lose her virginity in a taboo fashion - to her uncle. Sex will remain a squalid self-harming impersonal experience for her throughout the book.
The second half of the novel worked less well for me. The narrator is now at university but has become no more adept at articulating her experience in coherent language. Experimental prose often relies on a masterful command of rhythm and this is where I found the author lacking. The prose doesn't have a poetic beat. The other aspect of this book I didn't warm to was its depiction of the Catholic church. It turned what could have been a universal story into a parochially Irish one. And it seemed dated and clichéd. Ireland must be the worst advert for the Catholic church. I grew up as a Catholic (of Italian and not Irish heritage) and frankly don't recognise any of the oppression with which the author heavily ladles this novel. Clearly the author is hugely influenced by Joyce and Beckett and she does add something new - the female perspective - but I never felt she has the genius of her two mentors. Therefore, I only found it successful in part. When it's good - all the stuff on adolescent female sexuality - it's very good.
The second half of the novel worked less well for me. The narrator is now at university but has become no more adept at articulating her experience in coherent language. Experimental prose often relies on a masterful command of rhythm and this is where I found the author lacking. The prose doesn't have a poetic beat. The other aspect of this book I didn't warm to was its depiction of the Catholic church. It turned what could have been a universal story into a parochially Irish one. And it seemed dated and clichéd. Ireland must be the worst advert for the Catholic church. I grew up as a Catholic (of Italian and not Irish heritage) and frankly don't recognise any of the oppression with which the author heavily ladles this novel. Clearly the author is hugely influenced by Joyce and Beckett and she does add something new - the female perspective - but I never felt she has the genius of her two mentors. Therefore, I only found it successful in part. When it's good - all the stuff on adolescent female sexuality - it's very good.
March 31, 2015
Womb words. Words of woman's pain. Pain in blood. Man bad blood all men. Words broken. Lines torn. Fractured like woman. Girl. Woman. All women. All women broken. Men. Break. Men take. Men tear. All. Men talking shit and women taking shit and keeping. Prizes for their pain.
Shit. Prized. Hard won from pain.
Prize. Won.
Shit.
Shit. Prized. Hard won from pain.
Prize. Won.
Shit.
January 31, 2014
Absolutely awful book, average storyline but irritating and totally pointless writing style. I didn't finish it, got to page 130, just couldn't waste any more of my precious free time reading it. Pity as it had rave reviews, I'm still asking why, a promotional ploy perhaps?!
April 24, 2021
I think this book worked for me because I listened to the audiobook. At first I found the style difficult and wasn’t sure if I could put up with it for long. However this soon changed and listening to it rather than reading It made her stream of consciousness so fluid and lyrical.
I have to say I did find some parts rather uncomfortable and it takes a lot for me to feel that way.
I have to say I did find some parts rather uncomfortable and it takes a lot for me to feel that way.
October 7, 2013
This is an experimental novel that uses ungrammatical stream-of-consciousness sentences to describe an Irish girl’s coming of age in an undetermined time frame (1980’s maybe?). Her older brother’s travails with brain cancer is a central theme, but the story really revolves around the narrator whether she wants to admit it or not.
The opening paragraph is rather daunting for the unprepared:
For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say. Mammy me? Yes you. Bounce the bed. I’d say. I’d say that’s what you did. Then lay you down. They cut you round. Wait and hour and day.
I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what the hell is going on here. I think the narrator is talking about her older brother’s birth, intermixed with later discussion with the narrator and her brother are talking about his birth with his mother.
Fortunately, the book settles down rather quickly, and it’s pretty easy to follow. On page four, regarding her brother’s first brain surgery:
There’s good news and bad news. It’s shrunk. He’s saved. He’s not. He’ll never be. So like it lump it a short breath’s what you’ve got. Jesus in her blood that minute. Rejoice sacred heart of Christ. But we’ll never be rid do you understand? He says. Shush now she says shush.
There are no quote marks in this novel. I recall one sentence with a comma or two, but that was it. The first speaker in this paragraph is the doctor delivering a mixed message about the result of the surgery. Then it quick shifts to the author’s mother who rejoices at the news. Then it’s back to the doctor says don’t get your hopes up too much, and then mother tells him too shush.
This sort of thing is not too taxing to read. One of this technique’s key advantages is that the reader can quickly get swept up in the emotion of the moment. At its best, the prose sweeps you along and the emotional impact can be greater than standardized prose. Nowhere is this more evident than chapter four which in seven quick pages tells of a dramatic, tension-filled visit from the narrator’s maternal grandfather. The prose reflects the raw, primitive emotions on display.
The problem with this prose technique is that after a while, it feels like a gimmick. The reader is compelled to ask, “Why don’t you just tell the story the normal way instead of being obscure?” This is particularly true in this novel because it spans over twenty years. I first heard of this novel from a review in London Review of Books (forgive me if I unwittingly steal the review’s insights). The review made note of the novel’s similarities to Beckett, another Irish author. I’m not familiar with all of Beckett’s work, but this novel does remind me of Beckett’s trilogy of novel/novella-length works, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable and his trilogy of short stories The End, The Expelled, and The Calmative. If memory serves, the time frame of these works are continuous, although sometimes the length of time that has actually elapsed is unclear.
In Beckett’s work there tends to be a sort of goal, the narrator is taking some sort of meandering path or is trying to make sense of his surroundings. Stream of consciousness matches up with an immediate time frame. But Girl is a Half-formed Thing has a series of scenes with an immediate time frames, sometimes introduced with helpful sentences indicating the narrator’s age. This disrupts the flow and brings to the forefront the fact that the stream of sentences is a contrivance.
This was a novel that should have been a half-formed thing, that is to say a novella. Novellas are most often seen in terms of their reduced page count, and this novel, weighing in at 203 pages, is about 50-60 pages too long. I’m reminded of Six Degrees of Separation, when Flan says:
“When the kids were little, we went to a parents’ meeting at their school and I asked the teacher why all her students were geniuses in the second grade. Look at the first grade. Blotches of green and black. Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade — Matisses every one. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: ‘Secret? I don’t have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.’”
Someone should have taken Eimear McBride’s keyboard away two-thirds into the novel. McBride is very much fascinated with masochism, which isn’t my thing, but ok, I’m willing to go with it while I’m reading. But when the author goes back to it again and again when it adds nothing to the novel, then it becomes tedious. Perhaps McBride sensed this too, so she tries to add more too it. Making it more violent wasn’t good enough – she decided to experiment with prose even further by playiNg WiTH caPs and malFoRMEDWords and just a bunnnnch of lettttters together. Sorry, Ms. Author, but you’ve tried our patience enough with the ungrammatical sentences, we’re not willing to indulge you further.
Still, if you’re a writer, I recommend you try this book, because it’s a contemporary exploration into the limits of prose.
The opening paragraph is rather daunting for the unprepared:
For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say. Mammy me? Yes you. Bounce the bed. I’d say. I’d say that’s what you did. Then lay you down. They cut you round. Wait and hour and day.
I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what the hell is going on here. I think the narrator is talking about her older brother’s birth, intermixed with later discussion with the narrator and her brother are talking about his birth with his mother.
Fortunately, the book settles down rather quickly, and it’s pretty easy to follow. On page four, regarding her brother’s first brain surgery:
There’s good news and bad news. It’s shrunk. He’s saved. He’s not. He’ll never be. So like it lump it a short breath’s what you’ve got. Jesus in her blood that minute. Rejoice sacred heart of Christ. But we’ll never be rid do you understand? He says. Shush now she says shush.
There are no quote marks in this novel. I recall one sentence with a comma or two, but that was it. The first speaker in this paragraph is the doctor delivering a mixed message about the result of the surgery. Then it quick shifts to the author’s mother who rejoices at the news. Then it’s back to the doctor says don’t get your hopes up too much, and then mother tells him too shush.
This sort of thing is not too taxing to read. One of this technique’s key advantages is that the reader can quickly get swept up in the emotion of the moment. At its best, the prose sweeps you along and the emotional impact can be greater than standardized prose. Nowhere is this more evident than chapter four which in seven quick pages tells of a dramatic, tension-filled visit from the narrator’s maternal grandfather. The prose reflects the raw, primitive emotions on display.
The problem with this prose technique is that after a while, it feels like a gimmick. The reader is compelled to ask, “Why don’t you just tell the story the normal way instead of being obscure?” This is particularly true in this novel because it spans over twenty years. I first heard of this novel from a review in London Review of Books (forgive me if I unwittingly steal the review’s insights). The review made note of the novel’s similarities to Beckett, another Irish author. I’m not familiar with all of Beckett’s work, but this novel does remind me of Beckett’s trilogy of novel/novella-length works, Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnamable and his trilogy of short stories The End, The Expelled, and The Calmative. If memory serves, the time frame of these works are continuous, although sometimes the length of time that has actually elapsed is unclear.
In Beckett’s work there tends to be a sort of goal, the narrator is taking some sort of meandering path or is trying to make sense of his surroundings. Stream of consciousness matches up with an immediate time frame. But Girl is a Half-formed Thing has a series of scenes with an immediate time frames, sometimes introduced with helpful sentences indicating the narrator’s age. This disrupts the flow and brings to the forefront the fact that the stream of sentences is a contrivance.
This was a novel that should have been a half-formed thing, that is to say a novella. Novellas are most often seen in terms of their reduced page count, and this novel, weighing in at 203 pages, is about 50-60 pages too long. I’m reminded of Six Degrees of Separation, when Flan says:
“When the kids were little, we went to a parents’ meeting at their school and I asked the teacher why all her students were geniuses in the second grade. Look at the first grade. Blotches of green and black. Look at the third grade. Camouflage. But the second grade — Matisses every one. Let me study with you. Let me into the second grade! What is your secret? And this is what she said: ‘Secret? I don’t have any secret. I just know when to take their drawings away from them.’”
Someone should have taken Eimear McBride’s keyboard away two-thirds into the novel. McBride is very much fascinated with masochism, which isn’t my thing, but ok, I’m willing to go with it while I’m reading. But when the author goes back to it again and again when it adds nothing to the novel, then it becomes tedious. Perhaps McBride sensed this too, so she tries to add more too it. Making it more violent wasn’t good enough – she decided to experiment with prose even further by playiNg WiTH caPs and malFoRMEDWords and just a bunnnnch of lettttters together. Sorry, Ms. Author, but you’ve tried our patience enough with the ungrammatical sentences, we’re not willing to indulge you further.
Still, if you’re a writer, I recommend you try this book, because it’s a contemporary exploration into the limits of prose.
January 1, 2015
It was an epiphanic reading of Ulysses on a train ride that changed Eimear McBride’s approach to writing. What must it have been like to be in her own mind for those six intense months of writing this? Ten years it took to find a publisher. I think most publishers’ minions likely couldn’t imagine stacking this in the mid-aisle tables of Walmart/Tesco and just tossed it in the WTF pile.
“I’m having bile thoughts. Great green ones of spite and their sloppedy daughters with tongues too long to keep in their mouths.”
It is a wildly askew balance, that of the creative imagination of the author and the dearth of one in the publisher. Ruled by sheep-flocks of marketers and number-crunchers, not readers. Still, the book managed to float up to the adoring notice of the critics.
This is a perfect title, for the story, for the writing style.
“They polyester tight-packed womanhood aflower in pink and blue or black and green coats if the day has rain. Their boots in the hallway, crusty with cow dung or wet muck. If in Sunday skirts, every pleat a landscape of their grown-up bodies. Tired. Under- touched. Flesh having run all night after the cows. Flesh carry sacks of turf up lanes from the shed and spurt out child and child and child. Son he has wanted. Girl he did not.”
The thoughts don’t obey boundaries, so neither do the words. It’s a feat of articulating inarticulateness. A paradox.
“Later it ran up me. Legs stomach knees chest up head. Like smoke in my lungs to be coughed out. I’d throw up excitement. What is it? Like a nosebleed. Like a freezing pain. I felt me not me. Turning to the sun. Feel the roast of it. Like sunburn. Like a hot sunstroke. Like globs dropping in. Through my hair. Spat skin with it. Blank my eyes the dazzle. Huge shatter. Me who is just new. Fallen out of the sky. What. Is lust it? That’s it. The first splinter. I. Give in scared. If I would. Stop. Him. Oh God. Is a mortal mortal sin.”
It is like an impressionist painting. If you try to impose preconceived notions of sentence, paragraph structure (artificial superfluous layers in a way), then you will drown in the chaotic fragments. Instead, let it settle upon you like a diaphanous layer of understanding. It is the impression of it that will fill in the details.
“Something awful’s going to. You can’t believe it away.”
Words, sentences, paragraphs are conventional tools to convey a story. They are separate from the story. Here, they are part of the narrator. They are her thoughts.
The story isn’t new. It is tragic, it is brutal, and it is a sadly familiar kind of tale.
But the telling of it…the writing…that is sublime.
“I’m having bile thoughts. Great green ones of spite and their sloppedy daughters with tongues too long to keep in their mouths.”
It is a wildly askew balance, that of the creative imagination of the author and the dearth of one in the publisher. Ruled by sheep-flocks of marketers and number-crunchers, not readers. Still, the book managed to float up to the adoring notice of the critics.
This is a perfect title, for the story, for the writing style.
“They polyester tight-packed womanhood aflower in pink and blue or black and green coats if the day has rain. Their boots in the hallway, crusty with cow dung or wet muck. If in Sunday skirts, every pleat a landscape of their grown-up bodies. Tired. Under- touched. Flesh having run all night after the cows. Flesh carry sacks of turf up lanes from the shed and spurt out child and child and child. Son he has wanted. Girl he did not.”
The thoughts don’t obey boundaries, so neither do the words. It’s a feat of articulating inarticulateness. A paradox.
“Later it ran up me. Legs stomach knees chest up head. Like smoke in my lungs to be coughed out. I’d throw up excitement. What is it? Like a nosebleed. Like a freezing pain. I felt me not me. Turning to the sun. Feel the roast of it. Like sunburn. Like a hot sunstroke. Like globs dropping in. Through my hair. Spat skin with it. Blank my eyes the dazzle. Huge shatter. Me who is just new. Fallen out of the sky. What. Is lust it? That’s it. The first splinter. I. Give in scared. If I would. Stop. Him. Oh God. Is a mortal mortal sin.”
It is like an impressionist painting. If you try to impose preconceived notions of sentence, paragraph structure (artificial superfluous layers in a way), then you will drown in the chaotic fragments. Instead, let it settle upon you like a diaphanous layer of understanding. It is the impression of it that will fill in the details.
“Something awful’s going to. You can’t believe it away.”
Words, sentences, paragraphs are conventional tools to convey a story. They are separate from the story. Here, they are part of the narrator. They are her thoughts.
The story isn’t new. It is tragic, it is brutal, and it is a sadly familiar kind of tale.
But the telling of it…the writing…that is sublime.
April 10, 2014
At a certain point, this book became more about trying to PUNISH me for reading it than anything else, and I really did not care for that. Harrowing is not my cup of tea at the best of times, but when something is so obviously designed to be as excruciating as humanly possible, I just get cranky and taken out of the book. I guess it worked though? The death scene was one of the most horrific things I have ever voluntarily subjected myself to. Plus, all the rape. Rape, sadness, pain, cruelty, more rape.
The style is so very self-conscious that it also annoyed me in waves. I quite like overly-stylised writing, but it is pretty exhausting here.
I guess it's not the book's fault that I was hoping for some feminist, 'the sluts-will-rise-and-conquer' story but it turned out to be really the opposite of that. There was such fleeting hope though! "There's a lot I'll do and they are all shame when they think their flesh desired. Offer up to me and disconcerted by my lack of saying no. Saying yes is the best of powers." But that power, briefly realised, is so quickly taken away.
I really did like the writing in fits though. Like: " Jesus is coming. Jesus be here soon. I'll rip his arms. I. Won't have God's son here I. Jesus will lose you. This time I say I'll win."
But: pain, rape, sadness, rape...
The style is so very self-conscious that it also annoyed me in waves. I quite like overly-stylised writing, but it is pretty exhausting here.
I guess it's not the book's fault that I was hoping for some feminist, 'the sluts-will-rise-and-conquer' story but it turned out to be really the opposite of that. There was such fleeting hope though! "There's a lot I'll do and they are all shame when they think their flesh desired. Offer up to me and disconcerted by my lack of saying no. Saying yes is the best of powers." But that power, briefly realised, is so quickly taken away.
I really did like the writing in fits though. Like: " Jesus is coming. Jesus be here soon. I'll rip his arms. I. Won't have God's son here I. Jesus will lose you. This time I say I'll win."
But: pain, rape, sadness, rape...
October 11, 2016
4.5 stars
I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. This is a sample of my thoughts while reading it:
What the what am I reading? This novel is a half formed thing.
Ok in between all these jumbled up sentences is a story.
Wow this is actually brilliant.
This is a dark, dark book.
The disjointed prose is the perfect way to tell this story.
Ok I'm ready to be done with this now.
Oh my god my heart is breaking!
This book is amazing and deserving of the awards it won.
I love this book.
I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. This is a sample of my thoughts while reading it:
What the what am I reading? This novel is a half formed thing.
Ok in between all these jumbled up sentences is a story.
Wow this is actually brilliant.
This is a dark, dark book.
The disjointed prose is the perfect way to tell this story.
Ok I'm ready to be done with this now.
Oh my god my heart is breaking!
This book is amazing and deserving of the awards it won.
I love this book.
August 5, 2019
I don’t know what to say about this book. We have been buddy reading this with my Women’s Prize group (Rachel (5 stars), Callum (4 stars), Naty (currently reading), Emily (5 stars), and Sarah (in a reading slump)) and I have been periodically telling them that the book is killing me. And killing me it did. I do not know that I have ever read a book that I found this viscerally upsetting. It’s brilliant, mind, but so raw and so upsetting that I am glad to be done with it – while simultaneously wanting to read eveything Eimear McBride has ever written.
Told in fragmented sentences that are not so much stream-of-consciousness (although they are this too) but rather a stumbling, breathless kind of impressionistic language, the prose is the first and obvious draw here. It took me about three chapters of my audiobook to find my bearing (I listened to each of those first three chapters at least twice, frequently skipping back to relisten) but once I did, I found it mesmerizing. The rhythm to the language is stunning and McBride’s audio narration was just brilliant. I am a huge fan of books told in second person singular – and this rambling, raw narrative, addressed to the unnamed narrator’s older brother hit very many sweet spots for me.
This is a story about grief and trauma and I could not ever listen to more than half an hour before needing a break. The main character is traumatized: first by her brother’s brain tumor and her parent’s abuse, then again when, at 13, her uncle brutally rapes her. After this, she never finds her bearing again, getting lost in toxic behaviour and self-harm spirals. I found this book endlessly bleak – so much that by the end I could only listen to minutes before becoming overwhelmed. I also wish the people in the narrator’s life weren’t all this horrible – the horribleness of the uncle nearly eclipsed what an awful person her mother was as well. I thought the prose worked best in moments of immediate trauma but there were moments when I found it more vague than impactful. Still, what a brilliant, brilliant book.
Content warning: sexual assault, rape, pedophilia, cancer, familial death, religious bigotry, self-harm, alcoholism, abuse.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
Told in fragmented sentences that are not so much stream-of-consciousness (although they are this too) but rather a stumbling, breathless kind of impressionistic language, the prose is the first and obvious draw here. It took me about three chapters of my audiobook to find my bearing (I listened to each of those first three chapters at least twice, frequently skipping back to relisten) but once I did, I found it mesmerizing. The rhythm to the language is stunning and McBride’s audio narration was just brilliant. I am a huge fan of books told in second person singular – and this rambling, raw narrative, addressed to the unnamed narrator’s older brother hit very many sweet spots for me.
This is a story about grief and trauma and I could not ever listen to more than half an hour before needing a break. The main character is traumatized: first by her brother’s brain tumor and her parent’s abuse, then again when, at 13, her uncle brutally rapes her. After this, she never finds her bearing again, getting lost in toxic behaviour and self-harm spirals. I found this book endlessly bleak – so much that by the end I could only listen to minutes before becoming overwhelmed. I also wish the people in the narrator’s life weren’t all this horrible – the horribleness of the uncle nearly eclipsed what an awful person her mother was as well. I thought the prose worked best in moments of immediate trauma but there were moments when I found it more vague than impactful. Still, what a brilliant, brilliant book.
Content warning: sexual assault, rape, pedophilia, cancer, familial death, religious bigotry, self-harm, alcoholism, abuse.
You can find this review and other thoughts on books on my blog.
June 21, 2019
Cold spanner. Page was. Under the stream of the. Find are. Time. Smelling green air.
Now isn't that annoying? Imagine reading a whole book constructed in this sense, sorry, this "stream of consciousness". Honestly, could you tell from what I wrote that I was selling underground tools to little green men that smell like garbage? Because if I hadn't read the back of the book I would have had no idea what half the characters were doing or would have done. It was so vague and the sentences were so misconstructed that I was literally more frustrated at the writing than the story (and a lot happens in the story).
As a reviewer so eloquently put it, to me, this book has been diagnosed with a case of The Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome. I honestly wish someone would explain what they liked about it and how they could stand reading so many unmeaningful and illogical sentences. It is such an insult to all those books that should be recognised for their work and should have been awarded. If I knew that writing random sentences about my "initial thoughts" would get me a book deal, I would have quit primary school.
I gave it a star because I appreciate her talent into crafting an amazing title that tricks people into reading the book.
Now isn't that annoying? Imagine reading a whole book constructed in this sense, sorry, this "stream of consciousness". Honestly, could you tell from what I wrote that I was selling underground tools to little green men that smell like garbage? Because if I hadn't read the back of the book I would have had no idea what half the characters were doing or would have done. It was so vague and the sentences were so misconstructed that I was literally more frustrated at the writing than the story (and a lot happens in the story).
As a reviewer so eloquently put it, to me, this book has been diagnosed with a case of The Emperor's New Clothes Syndrome. I honestly wish someone would explain what they liked about it and how they could stand reading so many unmeaningful and illogical sentences. It is such an insult to all those books that should be recognised for their work and should have been awarded. If I knew that writing random sentences about my "initial thoughts" would get me a book deal, I would have quit primary school.
I gave it a star because I appreciate her talent into crafting an amazing title that tricks people into reading the book.
June 11, 2023
This is almost impossible to rate or review because the writing is unlike anything I ever read before. But it’s definitely the most intense, disturbing and even triggering thing I’ve read in a while. It sent me spiraling hard but I also couldn’t stop reading
August 1, 2019
Having already read Eimear McBride's sophomore novel, The Lesser Bohemians, I thought I was prepared for A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. And indeed, I was prepared for McBride's signature and singular prose style, a terse, choppy sort of stream of consciousness that mimics the incompleteness of thought. It's a difficult style to warm up to: I've heard that listening to this book on audio can help, but personally I tried that and as I'm not an auditory learner at all, I found it much more comprehensible in print. So I think it does depend on your personal preferences, but once you settle into the rhythm of her words, it's not as daunting as you might expect.
What I was not prepared for was how utterly gutting this book ended up being. This has to be one of the most intense, visceral, excruciating things I have read in my life - second only to A Little Life, perhaps? Just, don't pick this up lightly. Trigger warnings for everything. Seriously, everything.
But it's not just brutal; it's good. Form, style, and content all dovetail here for one of the most perceptive examinations of the psychological toll of sexual assault that I have ever read. But more than that, this book is a raw and unfiltered look at sex, isolation, terminal illness, and sibling bonds, and though it's relentlessly internal in its construction, a commentary on growing up as a young woman in Ireland beautifully underscores the entire thing. The protagonist remains nameless, something that I often find gimmicky and unnecessary, but here it works perfectly as a constant reminder of the narrator's fractured sense of identity as she finds herself defined by the horrifying things that happen to her and around her as a young girl. This is a hard book to recommend as it's so impenetrable at a glance, and so harrowing once you do get into it, but I think this is a book that is going to stay with me for a long time.
"Him anxious. Not at all like. But I am happy. Satisfied that I've done wrong and now and now. What now? Calm sliding down into my boat and pushing out to sin. He's on the shoreline getting small."
What I was not prepared for was how utterly gutting this book ended up being. This has to be one of the most intense, visceral, excruciating things I have read in my life - second only to A Little Life, perhaps? Just, don't pick this up lightly. Trigger warnings for everything. Seriously, everything.
But it's not just brutal; it's good. Form, style, and content all dovetail here for one of the most perceptive examinations of the psychological toll of sexual assault that I have ever read. But more than that, this book is a raw and unfiltered look at sex, isolation, terminal illness, and sibling bonds, and though it's relentlessly internal in its construction, a commentary on growing up as a young woman in Ireland beautifully underscores the entire thing. The protagonist remains nameless, something that I often find gimmicky and unnecessary, but here it works perfectly as a constant reminder of the narrator's fractured sense of identity as she finds herself defined by the horrifying things that happen to her and around her as a young girl. This is a hard book to recommend as it's so impenetrable at a glance, and so harrowing once you do get into it, but I think this is a book that is going to stay with me for a long time.
June 19, 2016
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is a brutal, beautiful piece of writing. It is the smartest book I've read in some time. It is intelligent. It is challenging. And it is wonderful.
I would most like to write here about my personal experiences of reading this book. I really can’t critique this book in any other way. There was nothing academic about me when I read it. It was rough and I was raw.
This book spoke to me about shame and blame and the degradation of the self. It also spoke to me a lot about unspoken things, about the implicit understandings between siblings. The relationship between the unnamed female protagonist and her brother felt, to me, extra-ordinarily powerful, painfully yet stunningly symbiotic. Eimear McBride wrote about that so damn precisely, to such great effect, that it oftentimes left me gasping in tears for breath. In this book I read and felt such deep loss.
The prose, the pace, the push and the pull of McBride's writing is brilliantly complicated yet perfectly lucid. Her very sophisticated stream of consciousness style, her fragmented, traumatised syntax, the obscure fog followed by the most piercing clarity, consumed every part of me. Her narrative found clever ways to suffocate and also shatter me, it ached and pained me, it disrupted me, and then in many ways it validated me.
This novel is breathlessness.
I would most like to write here about my personal experiences of reading this book. I really can’t critique this book in any other way. There was nothing academic about me when I read it. It was rough and I was raw.
This book spoke to me about shame and blame and the degradation of the self. It also spoke to me a lot about unspoken things, about the implicit understandings between siblings. The relationship between the unnamed female protagonist and her brother felt, to me, extra-ordinarily powerful, painfully yet stunningly symbiotic. Eimear McBride wrote about that so damn precisely, to such great effect, that it oftentimes left me gasping in tears for breath. In this book I read and felt such deep loss.
The prose, the pace, the push and the pull of McBride's writing is brilliantly complicated yet perfectly lucid. Her very sophisticated stream of consciousness style, her fragmented, traumatised syntax, the obscure fog followed by the most piercing clarity, consumed every part of me. Her narrative found clever ways to suffocate and also shatter me, it ached and pained me, it disrupted me, and then in many ways it validated me.
This novel is breathlessness.
May 22, 2019
[4.5 stars]
I think with time this could bump up to 5 stars for me. Having just finished it, I need some time to process everything, but overall this is a very impactful novel. Not for everyone by any means—the content is extremely difficult to read about (warning for pretty intense sexual trauma/abuse), and the way she writes about grief and death is so painful. But it's also a remarkable feat. I admire McBride's writing so much. It's so unusual and weird, but at the same time feels more natural than almost any other prose I've ever read. I can't say I enjoyed this one as much as her other novel, The Lesser Bohemians, but I appreciated it for different reasons. And needless to say I will read anything she publishes.
I think with time this could bump up to 5 stars for me. Having just finished it, I need some time to process everything, but overall this is a very impactful novel. Not for everyone by any means—the content is extremely difficult to read about (warning for pretty intense sexual trauma/abuse), and the way she writes about grief and death is so painful. But it's also a remarkable feat. I admire McBride's writing so much. It's so unusual and weird, but at the same time feels more natural than almost any other prose I've ever read. I can't say I enjoyed this one as much as her other novel, The Lesser Bohemians, but I appreciated it for different reasons. And needless to say I will read anything she publishes.
February 21, 2019
A girl is a half-formed thing, was unfortunately for me, a exasperating, half-formed book. I had rather high hopes for this one, and based on mixed reviews, I thought I'd take the risk and just buy it. I'm definitely glad I didn't spend much money on it, though!
This book does not contain barely any sentences that are correctly formed. Now, while the author did this for a reason, continuing this writing method throughout the entire book, can actually irritate the reader and forces one to disengage with the plot. If McBride kind of slowed things down somewhat, and used fully formed sentences more generously, then maybe my empathetic side could have warmed with the main character more than I did.
The story is about a Catholic girl struggling with her sexuality, and her sick brother. I understood the tone of the book would probably be grim, but, I expected something more from this book, especially due to the detachment I felt whilst reading it. This might be a book that had potential to be something, but, I feel like McBride destroyed any kind of chance I had to like this, by causing the reader to become as disengaged as possible from her characters.
This book does not contain barely any sentences that are correctly formed. Now, while the author did this for a reason, continuing this writing method throughout the entire book, can actually irritate the reader and forces one to disengage with the plot. If McBride kind of slowed things down somewhat, and used fully formed sentences more generously, then maybe my empathetic side could have warmed with the main character more than I did.
The story is about a Catholic girl struggling with her sexuality, and her sick brother. I understood the tone of the book would probably be grim, but, I expected something more from this book, especially due to the detachment I felt whilst reading it. This might be a book that had potential to be something, but, I feel like McBride destroyed any kind of chance I had to like this, by causing the reader to become as disengaged as possible from her characters.
March 12, 2015
so so so awful. i hated almost every minute. pretty sure all the awards are a result of the emperor's new clothes syndrome, as if you rewrote it in English you'd find neither the plot nor the characters interesting. as it is though it's written in pathetic fragments which, painful enough the first time, you are forced to reread far too often because (surprise surprise) the meaning is often lost when you dispense with grammar and half the words you need to say something. felt like marking a never ending self indulgent melodramatic and boring essay by an illiterate teenager with delusions of grandeur. thank god it's over and thank god in the end. what a waste of money. stay far far far away.
November 4, 2013
Genius. Harrowing. McBride breaks language apart and glues it back together again in wondrous ways. Not for lazy readers. If a man wrote this he would be lauded and famous by now and it would not have taken seven years or more to find a publisher...
August 25, 2024
A girl is abused. Such horrific abuse. Awful. Terrible. Such disgusting abuse. Monstrous!!
But the abuse experienced by those who read this book... is worse.
But the abuse experienced by those who read this book... is worse.
February 24, 2025
Winner of the Women's Prize 2014.
I don't know what to say about this book. I've read five women's prize winners now and enjoyed them all, this is the first one that's disappointed me.
Or is it me?
This is described as an uncomfortable stream of consciousness, but it feels like a word dump to me. Words at random dumped on a page, and it didn't matter how much I concentrated, I had no idea what I was reading or what was going on.
It's a one star from me, and I'd love to hear from anyone who enjoyed this to what I'm missing in this prize-winning novel.
I don't know what to say about this book. I've read five women's prize winners now and enjoyed them all, this is the first one that's disappointed me.
Or is it me?
This is described as an uncomfortable stream of consciousness, but it feels like a word dump to me. Words at random dumped on a page, and it didn't matter how much I concentrated, I had no idea what I was reading or what was going on.
It's a one star from me, and I'd love to hear from anyone who enjoyed this to what I'm missing in this prize-winning novel.
February 23, 2016
I've never read a novel quite like this one. It is a difficult read both in style and subject matter but oh so worth sticking with. I must admit the stream of consciousness style was jarring at first but it soon settled into a rhythm and became completely natural. The result meant I've never felt more inside the head of a fictional character before. As the author has said in interviews, we don't think in perfect sentences - words are about emotions, articulating sensations.
The story itself is heart-wrenching and tragic. Themes of family, rural Ireland and horrific abuse are recounted in a shocking and unflinching manner. This is the kind of powerful, fearless book that pushes the boundaries of its art and Eimear McBride fully deserves all of the many plaudits coming her way.
The story itself is heart-wrenching and tragic. Themes of family, rural Ireland and horrific abuse are recounted in a shocking and unflinching manner. This is the kind of powerful, fearless book that pushes the boundaries of its art and Eimear McBride fully deserves all of the many plaudits coming her way.
February 13, 2020
Powerful, disturbing, depressing and effective. Makes your skin crawl. Want to hit a lot of people in this book. A lot of abuse. And no help from anyone. I had to make myself finish it. It’s a great book but I cannot recommend anyone to endure it. I felt relieved when she got ultimate peace in the end.
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