Bailey Women's Prize for fiction, 2014
The winner of the Bailey Women's Prize for fiction is Irish author Eimear McBride with her astonishing debut, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.
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. Request a copy from the Library.
Shortlist
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Burial Rites Hannah Kent
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Undertaking by Audrey Magee
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The BAILEYS Women’s Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman of any nationality in the English language. Established in 1996, the prize was set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.
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. Request a copy from the Library.
Shortlist
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Burial Rites Hannah Kent
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Undertaking by Audrey Magee
A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The BAILEYS Women’s Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman of any nationality in the English language. Established in 1996, the prize was set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.
