A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing: Adapted for the Stage

by Eimear McBride, Annie Ryan (Adaptor)

A critically acclaimed, multiple prize-winning debut novel that everyone has been talking about

Eimear McBride’s award-winning debut novel tells the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumor. Not so much a stream of consciousness as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, it is 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 at first hand. This isn’t always comfortable—but it is always a revelation.

Adapted for the stage by Annie Ryan for The Corn Exchange, Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival 2014.

Genres: Plays, Theatre, Fiction

81 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 27, 2015

About the author

Eimear 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.

Reviews

[Athiene · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my Irish module - brilliant but messed up

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just seen at the Edinburgh Fringe. A phenomenal one woman performance: haunting, mesmerising, raw and harrowing. The sheer ability and talent of the actor drew us in completely to the poetical language and the gritty tale.

[Victoria G · Rating 4 out of 5]

"He pull up my skirt. Put his hand between my legs.

Put yourself on me then, in me. Pull all other things out. Do whatever you want.

Take me stich by stich. Off. As though he knew and unwound it. I remember.

And I give him such a wide space to fill. Such a great white and empty room. I am.

In the evening when he can kiss me with all his tounge. I am evened. He says he's got an evening flight.

Say hello to my aunt for me."

I loved this harrowing account of growing up with mental and sexual abuse. It's beatyfully written and I can't wait to read the novel on which this stage adaptation is based.

[Grace Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to see this at the Edinburgh Fringe this year and pick up a copy of the text on my way out. I cannot rave enough about this piece. Beautiful, heartbreaking, uncomfortable and absorbing. Aoife Duffin was spellbinding, her voice and presence captivating for eighty minutes straight, tumbling out a tale of childhood and womanhood amidst grief and hatred and loneliness and oblivion. I was desperate to see the story laid out on paper, brief and broken and full of missing pieces, exactly the way I like my monologues. Nothing in this text disappoints.

[Rochelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book very difficult to read. I had to read portions aloud to myself. Nevertheless, it was well worth the effort. Very different perspective.

[Jessika · Rating 3 out of 5]

I imagine this would be more powerful to see performed than read, but I can see the gut punch hovering offscreen that would have landed if I were watching this or reading the actual novel.

[Gaby]

“my mother. feel the. strange and i am comfort there. i am the. right. i am the right thing.”

beautiful and fragmented writing. a whole life in 80 mins. this is good shit and very exciting theatre.

[Hannah Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent adaptation. It speaks to debbie tucker green's "random," a monlogue which similarly deals with a sister's response to the death of a brother.

[Claire Abs]

to-read

[Caitlin Baker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly striking.

Scares me with how difficult it would be to stage it with justice.

[chloe yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

so original. captures the inner monologue of the main character so well

[Honor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeeeeeeesus christ