Review: A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride.

About the book:

This experimental debut novel tells the story of a young woman’s traumatic coming-of-age in rural Ireland, as she struggles with her abusive family and clings to her relationship with her terminally ill brother.

(Published by Faber & Faber. April 2014.)

I first heard of this book when it was nominated for the Baileys Woman’s Prize for Fiction. I then saw some of the reviews and it sounded great and interesting so I was looking forward to reading it.

I did struggle with the style of the writing. I found this meant that the book was hard to read.
There were no punctuation marks and so I found it hard to keep up with in places and I found I was having to work hard to fill in the parts that weren’t that easy to understand. I had to go back and re-read to absorb it properly. As a result, it took me a good few days to read despite it being only 200 pages.

The concept of the book was interesting though. It was told from the point of view of a girl who is having to deal with the aftermath of her brother’s childhood illness. You never know her name. I did feel some sympathy for her character. She goes through a lot in her childhood and it subsequently affects her decisions later in life. She is a vulnerable girl and this is sometimes taken advantage of. It’s hard not to feel empathy for her.

I couldn’t really like her mother very much. She wasn’t a likeable person to me. Where the story is told from the girl’s point of view, you don’t really get to know the other characters that well though. You can only judge them by their actions toward her. You don’t get an insight into what they are feeling so it was hard to feel anything for other characters.

Despite this book being hard to read, I couldn’t put it down. It did pull me into the story and even when there were a couple of times where I nearly gave up on it because of the writing style, the plot would keep me reading.
I am still thinking about this book days later so it’s definitely had an impact on me. There were some parts I really enjoyed and there were others that were really hard going.

For me, it was captivating but I am not sure I can say I outright enjoyed it. It’s not an easy read but it was certainly engrossing and a fascinating one. I did like it but I am not sure why.

In my opinion, it’s one of those novels where you need to read it to fully make your mind up. It will either catch your interest or it won’t. I know some people who have loved it and others who haven’t.

by

Novel Kicks

About Novel Kicks/Laura...
Novel Kicks was founded in 2009 and is run by Laura who is currently living in Hampshire, and lives with husband, Chris and her cat, Buddy. She would love to be a writer. She’s trying to write the novel she thinks so much about. She’s loved reading and writing since ‘Creative Writing’ classes in primary school. When not trying to write the novel or writing snippets of stories on anything she can get her hands on, she loves reading, dancing like a loon, and watching Project Runway and Ugly Betty (her two TV guilty pleasures.) She also has an obsession with chocolate and Jammie Dodgers.