Books › A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
Women's Prize for Fiction 2014
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
240 pages
A fractured, breathless plunge into the raw consciousness of a young woman unraveling under the weight of grief and trauma.
What it feels like
Reading this novel is like being trapped inside a collapsing mind. The prose is entirely unmediated, a fractured and breathless torrent of raw thought that drags you directly into the protagonist's chaotic interiority. It moves with a propulsive, almost frantic energy, demanding your complete surrender to its jagged syntax and brutal emotional honesty. The atmosphere is intensely claustrophobic and devastating, steeped in the oppressive weight of religious guilt, family trauma, and the agonizing slow-motion loss of a beloved sibling. It is not an easy read, but it is a profoundly visceral one. This book will captivate readers who seek out fearless, experimental literary fiction and are willing to endure profound discomfort for a reading experience that is shattering, intimate, and utterly unforgettable.
- Mood
- claustrophobic
- devastating
- visceral
- chaotic
- Tone
- raw
- unflinching
- intimate
- brutal
- fragmented
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- sibling devotion · religious oppression · bodily autonomy · grief and illness · sexual trauma · fractured selfhood
- The writing
- Highly experimental and fractured, utilizing a breathless, unmediated syntax that mimics the raw, jagged edges of unformed thought.
- The arc
- A harrowing descent from vulnerable childhood attachment into chaotic, self-destructive grief and ultimate dissolution.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave challenging, boundary-pushing literary fiction and are willing to endure emotional devastation for profound intimacy.
Content notes
- terminal illness
- sexual violence
- child abuse
- religious trauma
- self-harm
- suicidal ideation
About the book
Eimear McBride's novel tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother who is living with the after effects of a brain tunour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and sensual urges of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, to read A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable - but it is always a revelation.
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.
The story is about a young woman's relationship with her older brother, who suffers a brain tumour in childhood that later returns when he is a young man. It spans roughly 20 years and is set largely in an isolated farming community in the west of Ireland at a time when the Catholic Church dominated every facet of a person's life. The first thing that strikes you about the novel is the prose style, which ignores all the usual conventions about use of the English language and quite brilliantly furrows its own unique groove. While it sputters along in fits and starts using half-formed sentences, incorrect grammar and isolated words, there are enough bursts of fluid and lucid writing to orientate the reader.
Description from Open Library.
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