Literary Fiction · DarkAn unnamed Irish girl's bond with her disabled brother, her religious mother and her troubled sexuality, in fragmented prose
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
A girl growing up in rural Ireland, told in broken, stream-of-consciousness sentences
The narrator is a young, unnamed Irish girl in rural Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s. The novel follows her relationship with her disabled brother, her religious mother and her own troubled sexuality. It is a stream-of-consciousness coming-of-age story with fragmented sentences, no quotation marks and experimental typography, so the opening is highly disorienting. Galley Beggar Press published it in 2013 in a first print run of 1,000 copies.
More about this book
Who
An unnamed girl, her disabled brother and her religious mother.
World
Rural Ireland, 1980s and 1990s.
What makes it different
The language is fragmented and has no quotation marks. It is McBride's debut and began with a print run of 1,000 copies.
Feel
Intense and demanding, at 227 pages.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- A Girl Is a Half-formed ThingWikipedia