The Lesser Bohemians - Hardcover

Eimear McBride's energetic, sensuous The Lesser Bohemians.has opened up new possibilities for writing about sex. (Lara Feigel Observer Books of the Year)

After McBride won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, many wondered if her next novel would sustain that same intensely original, stream-of-consciousness prose style. The Lesser Bohemians, about a young Irish woman, recently arrived in London, who falls for an older man, is softer in tone and subject matter but confirms McBride as an exciting literary talent. (Rebecca Rose Financial Times Book of the Year)

Though some found the contrast between her fractured main narrative voice and the inclusion of a more conventionally told story of abuse jarring, with only her second novel she has achieved the near-impossible - finding a new way to write about sex and intimacy. (Justine Jordan Guardian Books of the Year)

Without ever passing judgment, The Lesser Bohemians situates itself at that point of moral, sexual and grammatical uncertainty where ... 'pure is indivisible from its reverse.' For me it is the ability to delve so deeply into all of this, more or less regardless, that makes for the unique talent- the wilful, sensuous generosity - of Eimear McBride. (LRB)

McBride isn't an old-fashioned despot writer. The take-it-or-leave-it arrogance is absent. The confidence and the capacity are as good as anyone's, male or female, but... there's an openness, an inclusivity, a distinct lack of God-almightyness, that makes reading her such a pleasure. (Jeanette Winterson The New York Times Book Review)

McBride does something rather dazzling ... What is new in Eimear McBride's work is the way she uses a fractured interior language to depict sexual life and sexual trauma, to tell the truth about the body. (TLS)

It broke my heart several times over and on each occasion I had to stop to cry. McBride has made something strange and beautiful - well worth its difficulties. (The Evening Standard)

Linguistic joys and surprises on every page... There is a lot of sex in this book: sometimes painful and violent, mostly loving and often ecstatic, with McBride equally able to convey physical sensation and emotional intimacy ... this extraordinary novel deserves all the success of McBride's first. --(The New Statesman)

McBride is always brilliant on her central theme - the paradox that it is shame that makes us behave shamefully. --(The Irish Times)

The Lesser Bohemians" is every bit as stylistically resourceful as "Girl," every bit as urgent and authentic. ... For a second time, Ms. McBride has channeled the mental life of a narrator with an intensity, a lack of mediation, that few authors can achieve. "The Lesser Bohemians" is a full-on sensory experience-and another superlative achievement. --(Wall Street Journal)

Eimear McBride is the author of two novels: The Lesser Bohemians (James Tait Black Memorial Prize) and A Girl is a Half-formed Thing (Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, and others). She was the inaugural creative fellow at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading and occasionally writes for the Guardian, TLS, New Statesman and the Irish Times.