{"id":115,"date":"2016-09-09T13:36:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T13:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/?p=115"},"modified":"2016-09-09T13:36:44","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T13:36:44","slug":"post-quote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/?p=115","title":{"rendered":"Post Quote"},"content":{"rendered":"
After the phenomenal success of her debut, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing<\/em> (2013), Eimear McBride\u2019s new novel is less the literary equivalent of a tricky second album and more like a game of two halves. I cannot recall having such diametrically opposed feelings about the different parts of one novel as I do in the case of\u00a0The Lesser Bohemians.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1994, 18-year-old Eilis arrives in London from Ireland to study drama. Her Camden Town, with its bedsit-dwelling actors, is moreWithnail and I<\/em> than Parklife<\/em> and the lack of obvious period signifiers is one of the novel\u2019s subtle strengths.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

McBride writes in a stream of consciousness style that\u2019s as accessible as it is startling. It can make the world new at the same time as evoking its timeless fundamentals. \u201cIn the metal clang night talking films we walk,\u201d writes McBride, as Eilis and Stephen, a handsome professional actor 20 years her senior, roll home from the pub.<\/p>\n

McBride immerses the reader in Eilis\u2019s head and captures the exhilaration and self-doubt of first love: \u201cAnd I wish that I was someone else, a girl with words behind her face, not this one done up like a stone in herself.\u201d Stephen has a mysterious past and an estranged daughter and Eilis is attuned to his anguish: \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anyone get drunk this hard, like hammering nails down into his head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eilis has suffered too, as we learn when she visits her mother in Ireland and later when she does the \u201cEmotion Memory\u201d exercise in a drama class, but there\u2019s little room to explore this because the novel\u2019s second-half is dominated by Stephen.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so the long night begins,\u201d writes McBride at the start of a 60-odd page monologue of abuse, addiction and betrayal, which Stephen narrates with a combination of melodrama and platitudes that makes him sound like he\u2019s auditioning for a part in a soap opera. \u201cOnce you\u2019ve kicked all the trust out of somebody you can\u2019t ever get that back,\u201d he says of his ex, Marianne, who\u2019s taken their daughter Grace to live in Canada.<\/p>\n

When the novel re-immerses us in Eilis\u2019s perspective, there are memorable scenes, including a disturbing one when Eilis betrays Stephen with a stranger who burns her with his cigarette. But it\u2019s hard to exaggerate the capsizing effect that Stephen\u2019s monologue has on the whole novel. And worse is yet to come when Marianne arrives for a charged summit and announces that Stephen must be part of Grace\u2019s life after all.<\/p>\n

Is McBride\u2019s point that Stephen is a narcissist who\u2019s oblivious to Eilis\u2019s needs? In her first year at college, when she might otherwise be examining her own experiences, she\u2019s swamped by his problems. It\u2019s an interesting idea that\u2019s handled clumsily. \u201cI\u2019ve only now realised there\u2019s not one thing I\u2019ve managed to accomplish in my life with dignity,\u201d says Stephen. What kind of 39-year-old man says this to an 18-year-old woman? One from whom she should get as far away as possible.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After the phenomenal success of her debut, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing (2013), Eimear McBride\u2019s new novel is less the literary equivalent of a tricky second album and more like a game of two halves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-quote","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-post-format","post_format-post-format-quote","clearfix","overlay-wrapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/demo.exptheme.com\/nito\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}