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A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
Published 21 October 2013
ISBN 9781922182234
Format Paperback
Extent 240pp
AU Price $22.99
NZ Price $30.00

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

Formats & editions
Paperback
21 Oct 2013
EBook
23 Oct 2013
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Winner, Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, United Kingdom, 2014
Winner, Goldsmiths Prize, United Kingdom, 2013
Winner, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, Ireland, 2014
Winner, Desmond Elliott Prize, United Kingdom, 2014
Shortlisted, Folio Prize, 2014
Longlisted, Guardian First Book Award, United Kingdom, 2013

This incredible debut novel 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.
Published 21 October 2013
ISBN 9781922182234
Format Paperback
Extent 240pp
AU Price $22.99
NZ Price $30.00

About the author

Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride was born in Liverpool but moved to Ireland when she was three. She grew up in Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo and Castlebar, Co. Mayo, before moving to London aged seventeen to study at the Drama Centre. Her first novel, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, won many literary awards including the 2014 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the 2014 Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. Her most recent book is The Lesser Bohemians. Eimear lives in Norwich with her family.
EM

Also by Eimear McBride

The Lesser Bohemians
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Praise for A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

'Unforgettable…Eimear McBride is a writer of remarkable power and originality.' Times Literary Supplement

PRH, PRH

'She is definitely a genius... Truth-spilling, uncompromising and brilliant prose... An instant classic.' Anne Enright

PRH, PRH

'Eimear McBride's ferociously intense and stylistically challenging account of a young girl's coming-of-age in rural Ireland is an astonishing literary debut…bracingly alive with sardonic humour and brilliantly realised set-pieces…A remarkable achievement.' Irish Independent

PRH, PRH

'Beautifully-produced…immensely impressive.' Guardian

PRH, PRH

'Remarkable, harshly satisfying first novel.' London Review of Books

PRH, PRH

'The author's use of language is so unique, so instantly inimitable that McBridean deserves to be an adjective...The writing has its forebears. Virginia Woolf springs to mind in its interiority, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett in its expression of fragmented consciousness.' New Humanist

PRH, PRH