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.

"Be prepared to be blown away by this raw, visceral, brutally intense neomodernist first novel. "  -  NPR

Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, Eimear 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.

"This powerfully intense depiction of troubled girlhood is written with uncompromising brio and fidelity. After her long wait for a publisher, McBride deserves her critical success."  -  The Weekend Australian

Winner, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, 2014 
Winner, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, 2014 
Winner, Desmond Elliott Prize, 2014
Winner, Goldsmiths Prize, 2013