A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZE KERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD WINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE Eimear McBride''s award-winning debut novel tells the story of a young woman''s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. It is 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 at first hand. This isn''t always comfortable - but it is always a revelation.

Eimear McBride grew up in the west of Ireland and trained at Drama Centre London. Her first novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing took nine years to find a publisher and subsequently received a number of awards, including the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, and the Goldsmiths Prize. Her second novel The Lesser Bohemians won the 2017 James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the International Dublin Literary Award. In 2017 she was awarded the inaugural Creative Fellowship of the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading. In a 2018 Times Literary Supplement poll of 200 critics, academics, and fiction writers, McBride was named one of the ten best British and Irish novelists writing today. Strange Hotel is McBride's third novel.