Mouthpieces

by Eimear McBride

Written during her time as the inaugural fellow in the Beckett archive last year, Eimear McBride's three short, characteristically brilliant plays - collected in one work, Mouthpieces.Each play depicts a fragment of female experience, all of them told in in Eimear's vivid, original and sharp-witted style. In 'The Adminicle Exists', we hear the inner voice of a woman who saves her troubled, dangerous partner; in 'An Act of Violence', a woman is quizzed about her reaction to a man's death; in 'The Eye Machine', the character 'Eye' tells of her imprisonment, flickering through a slideshow of female stereotypes.

Genres: Poetry, Fiction, Irish Literature, Ireland, Short Stories, Plays, Theatre

43 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 16, 2021

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

[Bart Van Overmeire · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still can't get my head around Eimear McBride's writing, but I like it, I think.

[Wren · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Mouthpieces" is a collection of three... Monologues? Play-lets? Each is a beautifully realistic, starkly violent, snippet of the experience of womanhood. Delving into abuse, disbelief, steadfast determination, and pain, McBride paints a picture that you can't look away from. The kind of collection you might need to sit with and re-read once or twice for clarities sake (but in the best way).

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full Review on The Storygraph:
https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews...

[Rita Egan · Rating 5 out of 5]

JMaHSJ

Powerful.
Bleak.
Weighty.
Unnerving.
But powerful.

[victoria marie]

three thought provoking & incredible plays. excited to read more by this author soon.

[Oliver Shrouder · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting little collection, but I don’t feel like it breaks any mould on any of the subjects she talks about. That being said, the opening poem-story The Adminicle Exists is fantastic, and this is worth the purchase for that alone

[Mia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not for me.. too fractioned and sporadic feeling.

[amanda]

surprisingly mystical in tone ...

[Mark Hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

No concessions, her voice rattles with tricksy fluidity, a low tone, fiercely lacerating.
Billed as short plays, in fact the Mouthpieces are three long soliloquies.
We, I, you, yes you, not they, you, you men, you people, you place, you nothing. I, I, damn this is tiring ... We are guilty, you guilt, he guilts, she is guilted on, no
McBride - whose debut novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize in 2013 and the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction - was the 2017 winner of the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre in Reading University.
It tells. For all of yer man Beckett's unworldly gap-stop wisdom, he was an entertainer, and McBride with him. Despite and because of their Irish-exile difficulty, he in France and she in England, the more intimate Eimear dearly wants us to read her turning words. As the last two spoken lines of the third Mouthpiece tell us, she is ‘A powerful eye staring out from the depths of your machine.'
That goring, awesome 'your' sticks me, and I am squirming on the dusty tray, held by the giant lepidopterist, willing the needle to point-pin me down - at least, until I am dust.
Yes, this primal hurt-whisperer – sounding like all the Trojan women rolled into one - works wickedly well, alphabetical hypnotist that she is. And aye, if this be a man, then let her critter-patter pitter through me.
The words are worth it.

[Melissa Riley · Rating 4 out of 5]

CW: Alludes to domestic violence, drug abuse, physical abuse.
3.5 stars.

I generally dive into books without knowing much about them/reading the blurb. In this case I thoroughly suggest reading the summary in the inside flap. Otherwise "An Act of Violence" and "The Eye Machine" might leave you a little perplexed (unless that's what you're wanting in a reading experience).
Mouthpieces is described as 3 short pieces depicting fragments of female experience.
My 'favourite', for lack of a better word, was the first, "An Adminicle Exists". It felt a lot like watching Phoebe Waller-Bridge performing in the stage version of Fleabag (but without the breaks for humour though).

The short collection, only 40 pages at probably only 25 lines per page, is a very quick read but very powerful & amazingly visual for such a medium.

[Reisse Myy Fredericks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mouthpieces is an apt title for this formally inventive, novelized stage play—a recursive exploration of a woman’s trauma, looping through the ambiguities of recollection and telling. Written entirely as stage directions, it illustrates and retracts at once: we imagine the gestures, the audience, the curtain call, yet nothing material happens beyond the page.

The narrator is a fractured player (actor, victim, writer) experiencing, embodying, and observing herself in turn. McBride makes voice both subject and instrument, asking what it means to speak as and be spoken through. The result feels like a study in performance theory itself.

It recalls “Our Town” in its stripped-down existentialism, but McBride’s version is angrier: brief, but brutal. It reads like slam poetry made flesh: scripted, rehearsed, and devastating in its illusion of spontaneity.

[clare · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this today at a bookstore in Philly without looking inside because the synopsis seemed interesting. ’m not certain how I reacted to it. It was good, and I particularly liked the first and second piece. One problem I have is that it was written like poetry. (I tend to not like poetry) I also feel like parts of it were so vividly violent—unnecessarily so—that I had to step back for a moment before continuing. I’m not sure if that makes sense. Either way, I didn’t hate it, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to anyone.


’I have you. I have you. Across bumps and irregular speed.’

[Graham Sillars · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have never read this particular author before. I can’t decide exactly what I feel about the pieces I have read today and exactly what they mean or the complete meaning that they are meant to convey.

I can say that the writing is brilliant, confronting, deep and thought provoking. Maybe all those things are what we are meant to feel when reading these snapshots?!

They are told from the female perspective and, maybe, as a 35 year old man… I’m not supposed to fully grasp the meaning.

I enjoyed the three pieces… I think, I’m sure, I did!

[Brittany Mishra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of the three poems/plays, I liked The Eye Machine the most. It made more sense to list out what a female is, using all words and phrases that people use to call a woman. Tips, rape girls, rumps, hopeless, martyrs. etc. There is inspiration and enlightenment in the words and phrases chosen and not chosen and in how they are organized on the page. The other two plays did not seem to make a whole lot of sense, and the author tried to hard to be obscure.

[Gemma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the review in The Scotsman of this slim volume, describing the three parts as "playlets" and also said: "do not confuse [...] brevity of extent with a lack of intensity. These are powerful, disorientating works."

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

Definitely my shortest book of the year and, as such, one I'd not have bought had I a) seen it and/or read the page number before ordering it, blindly assuming it to be McBride's latest novel. Fine, as what I take to be scripts for performance pieces, but not what I wanted.

[Agni Guha · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
The first and the third piece were quite striking, but the second one just went over my head. There's something very distinct and urgent in her voice, but cold and calculated at the same time.

[Helen Marquis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a big fan of Eimear McBride. My only gripe with this collection of three short stories was how short it was. The first of the three is by far the best ('The Adminicle Exists'), but the other two show new stranger sides to her writing style, as the prose gets even more sparse and minimal, while still managing to carry a narrative on its slim shoulders.

[steph · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Adminicle Exists was pretty moving and well done but as the collection went on, my enthusiasm waned. It would be cool to see these pieces performed. I think when told theatrically they would come to life more than on the written page with words alone.

[Juliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mouthpieces transposes images of female suffering and trauma into beautifully written yet brutally executed stage pieces reminiscent of Beckett’s short stage plays (Not I, Rockaby, Footfalls, etc.), each more unsettling and brilliantly composed than the last.

[Niamh Lusson · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Camilla · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short and linguistically interesting read.

[Tia · Rating 3 out of 5]

“A powerful eye staring out from the depths of your machine”

[Ben Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

First two pieces didn't work for me. The third was interesting, smart, sharp and beautiful.

[SP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three playlets—powerful, evocative, violent and sporadic.

My favourite is the first titled The Adminicle Exists. This made my heart squeeze. The others? I think I just didn’t “get” them.

[Anne Schouten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mooi

[Asha Arif · Rating 3 out of 5]

That last story pretty much sums my head when I got into too deep of my mind

[Meg Brewer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some really interesting ideas about the female experience — excited to read again

[iqra · Rating 5 out of 5]

i didn’t think i liked mcbride’s writing until these three shorts packed into a small but powerful collection

[William Aughton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A deep, meaningful set of stories that does lack some depth and expansion other than the primary themes