A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

Winner of the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize McBride’s debut novel took nine years to find a publisher before being acquired by the tiny Galley Beggar Press and Coffee House acquired it only days before it took off in the UK, where it has since become a sensation, with huge reviews in every major outlet Girl takes the Irish tradition of epitomized by writers like Flann O'Brien and James Joyce, upending and revivifying it, giving us a young woman’s voice and experience that is bracing, harrowing, and intensely moving. Stream of consciousness sounds experimental, but the book progresses chronologically in a straightforward linear fashion and the reader’s intimacy with the narrator is what makes it such a powerful read.
McBride is an exceptionally charismatic reader (with excellent audio to support this) and advocate for her own work and CHP will bring her to the US The book is strikingly ambitious and with the Luiselli bookends the summer with big debut novels from young women and is in keeping with our recent string of smart baby blockbusters (Atocha, Submergence) Young women looking for their bildungsroman (a la How Should a Person Be) will find it in McBride Early passionate advocates in Elizabeth McCracken and Eleanor Catton