A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride
Having previously attended the Hay Festival and the Birmingham Literature Festival, I’ve seen my share of ‘In Conversation With’ type events where award winning authors are informally interviewed on their past and present work. I love attending events like these; it can be a great insight into how an author works, what makes them tick and how they find inspiration for their work.
By Jessica Dutton
However I was dubious about seeing Irish author, Eimear McBride at the Arena Theatre this week. Her debut novel “A Girl is a Half Formed Thing” won the Goldsmiths Prize 2013, was shortlisted for the 2014 Folio Prize and won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014. With all these accolades I was excited to read the novel when I picked it up in Waterstones last November but found myself giving up after two attempts of reading only 12 pages. I struggled to follow the unusual format and use of language and found it to be an alienating experience.
With a sour taste in my mouth, I went to the Arena Theatre to see Eimear McBride interviewed by Dr Nicola Allen, lecturer of English at the University of Wolverhampton. To introduce us to the novel, McBride was invited to read the opening of her book. I realised then that the beauty of the language cannot be really appreciated until listened to in the creators own voice. It was like a light bulb moment, ‘Oh that’s how I was supposed to read it!’ It was also useful to hear that the first chapter was narrated by the protagonist from the womb, ‘cause I totally didn’t get that.
The novel was written during a 6 month hiatus from temping jobs and went through 3 drafts before completed. It then took 9 years to be picked up by a publisher. “I didn’t know how to write a book” explained McBride, “I just did what felt natural to me. I’m not interested in ‘straight’ writing...I wanted to capture moments of thought and consciousness as they occur so that the reader experiences it with the character.” She achieved this by adopting an unconventional and poetic approach to writing prose and found herself borrowing language from the modernist novelist and poet, James Joyce.
“He is the monster who sits on the back of Irish writers but once I understood what I was writing, I knew I could close the door on Joyce.”
When Dr Allen quizzed McBride on the sex scenes in the book, which is an integral part of the narrative, her answer was refreshingly honest. “If it isn’t done well, it can be excruciatingly bad. I wrote on instinct and told myself not to use the word thrust.” Sound advice for any aspiring erotica writers out there.
McBride concluded the session by reading another extract from the novel, one that poetically described the protagonists meetings with men and addressed her sex addiction using prose in its rawest form. She also had some wonderful words of advice for novice writers:
1. Know when to stop writing, sometimes problems cannot be fixed and have to remain unsolved.
2. Fuck is the answer to everything.
