A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
'To read the opening paragraph of Eimear McBride’s novel A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing is to be radically disoriented,' says the LA Review of Books. 'What is fascinating here, and what should induct the novel into a more enduring canon of women’s writing, is that McBride never self-censors when engaging with the pain, the abjection, and the desperation generated out of situations in which a woman is granted little more than her body and her words to use as weapons within imbalanced power structures...It is a testament to McBride’s erudite yet brazen originality that the novel can thoughtfully speak back to some of the great texts of Western literature, while at the same time reading as though it were created entirely out of thin air.'
The Millions agrees that A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is not an easy read, and yet a necessary one: 'Yes, this book actually gave me nightmares. And yet I did not want to stop reading it.'
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing 'is a tautly woven, fully-formed thing,' says the Rumpus. 'And it is a feat: Eimear McBride is unrelenting in her vision, and drags you into the muck and the current after her and her unnamed girl, not even asking you if you want to drown.'
Eimear McBride shares a playlist for A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing at Largehearted Boy.
You can listen to Eimear McBride discussing the stage adaptation of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing on the BBC with theatre director Annie Ryan.
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is available now in bookshops and online.
