Eimear McBride's experimental novel A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing is a dazzling achievement, and with its Baileys Prize win has changed the face of mainstream fiction
Eimear McBride, who has won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction
The Telegraph - 04 June 2014
While Eimear McBride, a former actress, was writing her first novel, she had above her desk a phrase written by James Joyce in a letter to a friend: “One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.”
That novel, thought for almost a decade to be too experimental to publish at all, has now won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, beating such heavyweight authors as Donna Tartt, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri. Described by critics as “uncompromising and brilliant” and as “harshly satisfying”, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing pushes the boundaries of the novel form. That McBride has won a mainstream prize is a coup for anyone who cares to read something new.
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