The Art of Reading Book Club | Episode 12: 'A Girl is a Half-formed Thing' by Eimear McBride

The Arts Council Podcast

The January Art of Reading book club features Laureate for Irish Fiction Colm Tóibín in conversation with writer Eimear McBride about her novel 'A Girl is a Half-formed Thing'. “Eimear McBride’s groundbreaking first novel uses a style that matches the conscious mind’s darting processes. It tells the story of a young woman in an Irish town in a time when the open religiosity is in conflict with changing sexual mores. In the novel, words and sentences themselves are under pressure as the events of the novel become more tense and dramatic and painful.” — Colm Tóibín Eimear McBride is the author of three novels: ‘Strange Hotel’, ‘The Lesser Bohemians’ and ‘A Girl is a Half-formed Thing’. She held the inaugural Creative Fellowship at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading which resulted in the performance work ‘Mouthpieces’ - later broadcast by RTE Radio. Her first full length non-fiction work ‘Something Out of Place: Women & Disgust’ was published in 2021, while her first foray into film writing and direction ‘A Very Short Film About Longing,’ produced by DMC and BBC Film, has recently been completed. She is the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, Desmond Eliot Prize and the Kerry Prize. She grew up in the west of Ireland and now lives in London. Learn more about the Laureate for Irish Fiction programme here: https://www.artscouncil.ie/Arts-in-Ireland/Literature/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction/Laureate-for-Irish-Fiction-2022-2024/