The Lesser Bohemians

July 4, 2016
McBride’s second novel is more ambitious than her acclaimed debut, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, and it retains the uncompromisingly Joycean brogue and diary-like intimations of adolescence that made that first novel such a success. Set between 1994 and 1995, it follows 18-year-old Eily, a boozy ingénue, as she leaves her native Ireland to attend drama school in London. There, caught in whirl of excess and the shadow of IRA terrorism, she is mostly assigned stereotypically Irish bit parts, but finds herself captivated by a much older actor named Stephen, an ex-junkie estranged from his family and young daughter. Initially meeting without names, they embark on a tempestuous relationship that reveals the worst in both while offering Stephen a chance at redemption and Eily a future. But the real focus is McBride’s stream-of-consciousness prose, in which drinking is rendered as “pints turning telescope,” “the lightless hall sings sanctuary from the frenzy” of a violent encounter, and a night of youthful debauchery leaves the revelers with “Satan under every skin. Skinful under all our skin.” The story (especially when Stephen’s backstory hijacks the narrative) isn’t full enough to sustain McBride’s style, which comes to seem less and less an accurate shorthand for first love. Still, this sophomore effort is striking enough to continue McBride’s forging of a daring career.

Eimear McBride was an actor before she was a writer. Her novels, especially as performed by her, are breathtakingly effective both as literature and as theater. The writing is elliptical but not confusing; she just clips out the bits of the sentence that don't need saying. The technique packs her characters' emotions more densely and gives you the sense of being inside another person's head. Here it's the head of an Irish girl in her first year at a London drama school as she falls into a chromosome-altering love affair with an older actor. This is gorgeous, heartbreaking work. This telling is so moving, so universal and yet so specific to these two gifted, damaged people, so powerful (and powerfully erotic) as to be unforgettable. B.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine