A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

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.