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A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing: A Novel
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A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing: A Novel
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A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing: A Novel
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A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing: A Novel

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

The dazzling, fearless debut novel that won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the book the New York Times hails as "a future classic".

In scathing, furious, unforgettable prose, Eimear McBride tells the story of a young girl's devastating adolescence as she and her brother, who suffers from a brain tumor, struggle for a semblance of normalcy in the shadow of sexual abuse, denial, and chaos at home. Plunging readers inside the psyche of a girl isolated by her own dangerously confusing sexuality, pervading guilt, and unrelenting trauma, McBride's writing carries echoes of Joyce, O'Brien, and Woolf. A Girl is a Half-formed Thing is a revelatory work of fiction, a novel that instantly takes its place in the canon.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 9, 2015
ISBN9781101922699
Unavailable
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing: A Novel

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Reviews for A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

Rating: 3.6330274880733944 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

218 ratings32 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When the female narrator of this story is born her brother is just over two years old and is recovering from an operation, followed by chemotherapy, to reduce the size of his brain tumour. The treatment has been partially successful but has left him with some physical impairments, and there remains the ever-present fear that the tumour will grow again. Her father, unable to cope with all the stress of seeing his son so ill, leaves home before she is born, leaving her mother to bring up both children on her own, relying on religious faith to give her the strength to cope. None of the characters in this intense, disturbing and memorable, coming-of-age story is ever given a name and, for me, that added to the intensity of the narrator’s reflections on her experiences of living her life in the constant shadow of her brother’s vulnerability and her search for her own identity. Her mother is physically and emotionally abusive towards her, and yet she is also sometimes surprisingly loving. From the age of thirteen an uncle abuses her and other relatives are ever-ready to find fault with her apparently wild, blasphemous behaviour. She seems to make lots of bad choices and yet her love and touching concern for her brother remain constant, even when this seems to be at the expense of her own needs. Religion, sin, guilt, shame, blame, hypocrisy, brutality and the omnipresence of priests are constant influences on her as she struggles to discover who she is, and what life holds for her. Once I was able to enter into the narrator’s broken speech-patterns and mangled syntax and could “hear” the rhythm of her words, not easy at to begin with, I felt totally drawn into this disturbing, raw and very moving story. I think it is a remarkable piece of writing which evocatively captures the reflections of the inner life of a child/young woman as she attempts to make sense of the situations she finds herself in. Some of the descriptions of the violence in the family background, almost casually brutal at times, felt almost unbearable to read, as did the numerous incidents of bullying, sexual abuse, prejudice, bigotry and hypocrisy. The background of rural, Catholic Ireland, dominated by the church, religion and the all too powerful influence of the priests made me increasingly angry as the story progressed to its all too painful conclusion. By the time I finished the book I felt emotionally battered by the experience of feeling so immersed in this young woman’s life. This was not, in anyway, an easy book to read (nor is it easy to do it justice to in a review!) but I am pleased that I persevered with it. I know that it will continue to haunt me for a long time.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This was just tougher going than it should have been. I'm guessing the broken down sentences were supposed to be Joycean, but I didn't have the patience. Child molestation, brain tumours and oppressive religion. Not fun.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    OMG my brain hurts! A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by Eimear McBride is a stream of consciousness novel that explores some very basic themes, a coming of age story about family relationships and lost innocence. This novel was very difficult to read, both due to content and style of writing. It’s uncompromising, intense and intelligent. I have never hidden the fact that “stream of consciousness’ is not a style that I easily take to but I would say that this author uses this genre to it’s full effect.The book is a first person monologue given by an unnamed girl growing up in Ireland. The story is full of emotional betrayals and physical abuse. She is the “I” of the story while the “you” is always her disabled brother who suffers from the after affects of brain cancer. Other characters that are referenced are the absent father who abandoned the family, her ranting Catholic mother and her abusive uncle. Her life unfolds in a series of raw, unfliching episodes.I had to read this book in small helpings as I could feel my eyes start to glaze over after a couple of pages and I would disconnect from the story, luckily this was a fairly short novel that I could read in short bursts. And while I appreciate the stylistic, tortured writing, I cannot totally applaud it as reading it was such a struggle. A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is certainly unique and deserves our attention, but not a book that I appreciated or enjoyed.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book is wonderfully unusual. The experimental prose adds to the concept of the book as a whole. The girl, the main character, is only on the cusp of figuring out life and where hers is going. The prose creates images in the reader's head without the distraction of dialogue or description. It was a weird experience for me.

    This kind of writing is being likened to James Joyce and William Faulkner, but please don't let that deter you. I almost didn't go for this book after reading those comparisons. McBride takes the best of what those two men could do and transforms this type of writing into something that the reader can actually understand.

    It took me a while to get used to it. Reading this book was actually a lot of work, and sometimes I was just too tired to give it all the concentration it required, so it took me a while to get through it.

    There are a lot of disturbing images and scenes, which I think a lot of reviewers found unnecessarily distasteful, but I think they only add to the development of the main character (or lack thereof, really). The book is really dark, and there is no redemption for anyone. So, if you're one who goes in for happy endings, this isn't it.

    The book, for me, was work, but the last two pages made the whole effort worthwhile. The ending was poetry.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I'm a bookseller. While reading A Girl is a Half-formed thing I found myself thinking who could I possibly recommend this book to? Possibly fans of Hubert Selby Jr.'s Last Exit to Brooklyn.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Okay, so Virginia Woolf. But why now? Why this? If you LOOOOOOOOVE modernism, dive in. If not, it'll be a 200-page slog.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I recognize that this a well-crafted piece of literature, but it did not work for me. I am duly disappointed in myself.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I can't even.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing has deservedly garnered a lot of praise, but not everyone will be able to stomach the content of Eimar McBride's debut novel, or her radical stream-of-consciousness prose. It is a demanding read, and at times an emotionally gruelling one. I was fascinated with the author's rhythm and distinctive style - however, I fall short of adoring this novel, largely because I found it so unrelentingly bleak. The small religious community the girl grows up, in the narrow-mindedness of the family, the tragic banalness of the plight of her brother - who has brain cancer - are depressing enough. Add to that sexual abuse and what I found to be very confronting sexual scenes, and you get an idea of what I mean. The psychology of the central character is fascinating but disturbing and tragic.

    I recommend for those with strong stomachs and high tolerance for experimental writing.

    Bonus points for a gorgeous cover by W.H.Chong
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Brilliant! Not for the faint-hearted, McBride's remarkable debut novel takes the reader through the intense life of the 12-year-old female Irish Catholic protagonist. Harrowing, beautiful, vulgar, tender, raw and touching, the story does not shy away from the violence of rape and the occurrence of incest, while laying out the adolescent confusion between love and sex, and the testing and chaotic mind of one who is coming-of-age. McBride takes the English language and conventional narrative structure, and turns it upside-down and inside-out in a way that is to be admired and leaves the reader in awe. Her reconstruction of the conventional is ground-breaking, and it embodies the deranged (yet sympathetic) story and the disorienting protagonist. A great read if you can handle raw literature.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I tried to read it, but I couldn't take it. The writing style was so weird. I had a lot of trouble retaining anything. After finding myself rereading the first 25 pages several times and still struggling, I gave up. I'm kind of surprised this won an award. I hated it. Maybe it gets better if you stick it out, but it just wasn't for me.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This was a beautiful, raw book.Look, I'm a little slow, and I needed, like a hot bath or something, some time to ease in. In fact, I read the first chapter over twice, three times. The second was to figure out what was going on, who's voice this was, and then the third was to savor it.So the style's a bit different than your run-of-the-mill novel, but man oh man, does she use it well. It reminds me a little bit of Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, but Eimear McBride's book is so so so so much better.The main character, her relationships to her family and those around her are all so well depicted, and so heart-breaking, this book lived up to the hype.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is quite a phenomenal debut. Written in fragmented, disjointed, dreamlike, stream of consciousness prose, it is a raw and emotional piece that revolves around a relationship with a brother born with a brain tumor. It held my attention to the end, however, the story evolves into non-stop harrowing emotional and violent sexual abuse. The writing is creative and memorable (five stars), but the inescapable violence and horror (2 stars) is nauseating.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    To be honest I hated it. It was hard to read because of the narrative style and the content wasn't very entertaining. I hated the ending as well. But then I never finished Ulysses!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It is a very unique book, I had never read something similar -not that I remember- but I definitely liked it. However, some people may dislike the way in which it's written, because it is confusing and overwhelming; actually, from time to time I was like "Wait, wait, what did just happen???", so if you think it'll bother you not having a clear picture of every single situation in the book then probably you shouldn't read it. Personally, I enjoyed it very much, I felt so trapped inside the protagonist's mind -whose name is not given, by the way- that I was anxious, disturbed and frightened during great part of the book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The adventurously difficult language here is a high wire act which McBride pulls off. But there is no payoff here for the difficulty - the innovative technique conceals a crushingly conventional story of yet another monumentally screwed up Irish Catholic family. And the complete lack of interior perspective leaves one with no emotional foothold.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    An extremely bleak tale which is evoked through a writing style that departs from any variety of English. McBride grabs the reader by the throat and rubs the reader's nose in extreme emotion.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The backstory: A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, Eimear McBride's debut novel, is shortlisted for the 2014 Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction.The basics: "Eimear McBride's acclaimed debut tells the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumor, touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma."--from the publisherMy thoughts: When I sat down to start A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing, I was curious and excited. I knew it was receiving praise from some very big names and that it was experimental in nature. I eager to become part of the Eimear McBride club. After ten pages, I realized I had zero idea of what I had read beyond words. I started over.Finishing A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing is something of an accomplishment for me. It was incredibly challenging to read and required a high level of concentration. It was not a book I could lose myself in for hours. It was a book I had to read in short bursts that left me tired from slow reading and fast thinking. The experience is almost like reading in a foreign language--I spent as much time reading as I did trying to make sense of the strings of words that were only sometimes sentences. It's a different kind of concentration, and I often wondered if the effort would be worth it.There were times I felt like a bad-ass reading this novel. "I am so smart and worldly!" I thought to myself when I found myself following the narrative more easily. Sadly, these moments were quickly followed by realizations I had once again lost the narrative threads and needed to re-trace my steps. The verdict: I rate books based on a combination of quality, appreciation and enjoyment. A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing is among the most difficult books to rate I've ever read. It is an accomplished novel, and I appreciate the experimental nature of McBride's work, but it isn't a novel I enjoyed reading. It's certainly award-worthy, but it's also a novel I would recommend to only the most adventurous and dedicated readers. Finishing it felt like the literary equivalent of running a marathon, and I was mostly glad to be done just so I could say I was--and move onto a novel I enjoyed more, even if it's not as accomplished or inventive.Rating: 3.5 out of 5
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It took me a very long time to get into this, purely due to the stream-of-conciousness style writing (and this is a REAL stream-of-conciousness - think about it - we very rarely think in complete sentences and usually there are several thoughts going on there at a time...). I say this as one who has never had trouble reading vernacular in the past.But oh my what a sad story. Basically the life story and perspective of the girl in the title and of her relationship with her brother, who very nearly died from a brain tumour when he was small (in fact much of it feels almost like a prayer to him). They're a mixed up family - the father completely out of the picture when both kids are young, a mother traumatised by her son's cancer and her own overbearing and judgemental father and then there's the full weight of Irish Catholic guilt. Not to mention the aunt and uncle most in their lives.Somehow, despite the fact that this is quite a distressing and difficult book to read - amplified in the tense, stressful moments as the stream-of-conciousness very believably becomes more and more muddled and confusing, something kept driving me through it, despite moments, where I honestly wasn't entirely sure what was going on. It's a visceral, upsetting story and I can't say I particularly enjoyed reading it, but I'm very glad that I did. It is also not impossible that I will return to it at some point as I suspect it would become clearer through re-reading. I have heard that when read aloud by the author, it suddenly becomes much clearer, which makes a lot of sense. I always find poetry easier to understand when it's read aloud too and despite the confusion of the writing style, it's also quite lyrical. I definitely intend to see if there are any recordings of her reading it (or if there is an audiobook - but it would need to be a Southern Irish reader I think).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a hugely powerful piece of writing - it is too dark and disturbing to be considered an enjoyable read, but I couldn't put it down. The disjointed prose style works brilliantly, and the book richly deserves the attention it has received recently.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I tried to like it, but half the time I had no idea what was happening. I admit it - it went right over my head. At times I liked it, but then I felt pretentious and as if I were kidding myself. This book isn't for all, and it wasn't for me.Three things:1) Sentences were never complete. I know that's the point, but half the time I had no idea what was happening. The author could have structured it much better to convey both a stream of consciousness and the story.2) Dietetic language is used and non-dietetic isn't. In short, you won't know who's being referred to, who's in the scene, who's talking, or what's happening. What's the point?3) I dislike books that talk about snot, and this one wouldn't shut up about it. If it was rewritten to make partial sense, then I'd probably give it a 3. As it stands now, I'll warn people not to waste their money and time.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Not a book for the casual reader. This is a book you have to work for. It won't appeal to all readers. It may not even appeal to most readers.

    The language is difficult to read. Deliberately so, because McBride uses language to hammer home the confusion and despair of her young protagonist. If you persevere you will find words and phrases that tug at the heart and soul.

    The story itself is brutal and tragic, full of the experiences of a young, confused, hurting woman, who acts in ways that hurt herself as a self-harming technique.

    It rewards re-reading.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I had to force myself to finish this book. The way it's written made it hard to understand or enjoy this book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Full of pain, yet you cannot stop listening. You feel her hurt, her confusion, her pain. Beautifully read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this book for my book group, and I have to be honest, if I'd picked this up in a bookshop or library, I wouldn't have taken it away with me. Firstly, it is without doubt an amazing technical achievement, written as the stream of consciousness of a girl from before birth. Because of the style, it's necessary to concentrate extremely hard to follow events. Not a bad thing in itself, but the experiences of the central character are almost entirely negative and harrowing, relieved only by some very black humour. As it is apparent almost from the beginning of the novel, it isn't too much of a spoiler to say that the narrator has an older brother who has a brain tumour at a young age which requires surgery. This leads to consequences in her school life and her family relationships. Her relationship with her mother seems entirely negative. Events occur which result in her embarking on many sexual encounters from her mid-teens onwards. The gratification she seems to get from masochism in these experiences is one of the most disturbing aspects of the book. The cumulative effect of the descriptions of these encounters becomes almost unbearable to read by the end of the novel. The conclusion when it arrives seems inevitable. Only two of the dozen members of my book group got through the whole novel and it is very challenging. Due to the subject matter I would be reluctant to re-read it myself.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I found this to be a very difficult book to read. The style was apparently meant to be stream of consciousness or possibly free-form poetry. I had to read passages over and over again because I couldn’t understand what was happening and felt that I was missing the story.Despite that, the story did come through and it was a terribly sad one. This girl’s love for her brother, who has a brain tumor, is heart wrenching. Her relationship with and treatment by her uncle-in-law is sickening and upsetting. Your heart will ache for this girl as she struggles to live a normal life amidst devastating illness, sexual abuse and confusion. The book plunges you into her mind, revealing raw emotion. It’s a very disturbing book.If you’re interested in reading this book, I would suggest that you find an excerpt to see whether you would like this style of writing. I can’t say that I did as it was quite a struggle to read and I found it confusing. It’s a very original work of literature and there are thought-provoking statements made throughout. Within all the scattered and fragmented thoughts, there will suddenly appear a clear and powerful insight. Because of these insights and the power of the story itself, I’ll give the book 2 stars. However, I’ll be careful not to read a book written in this style again. Obviously, many readers will disagree with me as the book has won numerous awards.This book was given to me by Blogging for Books in return for an honest review.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing is a both deeply beautiful and deeply unsettling book. Although the structure of the novel itself is in fact fairly conventional and linear, the  language is anything but expected or conventional.  There are few coherent sentences, and yet the story itself has a coherent flow if you allow the words their own space and their own musicality.  I suppose one might think it the author was attempting to write in a stream of consciousness mode, but that is not exactly it.  More likely the language seems to be attempting to explore that indistinct bridging between the inner primitive instinctual reaction and conscious thought.  The language of the novel seems to float in shifting sands between the rawness of instinct and the music of poetry.  In fact I would say this novel is far easier to read if you approach it as it was an epic poem.  Then the language can capture something elusive, and beautiful, in the story, even though the story itself is tragic.  Another point, even though one feels one knows the main character here, this too is an just an impression.  We read, and think we know the narrator's thoughts, but just as we ourselves are more than just our instinctual selves, so too this narrator, but we never really see her fully, just as we are never told anything about the physical being of any of the characters.   It is a haunting novel of pain and suffering and love, but also of knowing and not-knowing, and as such, I think it will remain with me for a long time
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Holy bejeez. First of all, best title of a book. A close rival is Milan Kundera's he Unbearable Lightness of Being. But the latter doesn't deliver the goods; Eimear McBride does. I've read but a scant few writers that can (seemingly) effortlessly present a first-person narrative voice that is both new & fresh while also being relentlessly, hurtingly human. Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man perhaps--the first chapter & last chapters especially. David Markson's done it in Springer’s Progress. He tried to do it in Wittgenstein's Mistress, but couldn't convincingly pull off a woman's voice.A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing is a story about the relationship between a pair of mixed-sexed siblings born to an Irish catholic family, raised by a single, devout mother who appears to be afflicted by an admixture of mental health disorders. It is narrated by her troubled daughter who, in almost stream of consciousness style, tells of how her older brother's childhood brain tumor tragically ramifies throughout their lives. It is told in real time, and it is addressed to the You of her brother.The plot itself doesn't indicate the newness nor the rawness of McBride's language. It's punctuated the way Christopher Walken speaks; broken and schizophrenic, with periods and commas in places they shouldn't. It all reflects her brokenness: the fissure and the hopeless void the narrator seeks lucklessly to fill. Here's a samplin':"I dream of creeping under. I dream of underground where the warm earth is where the fire goes. Where we're sleep creep you and me in holes...Who's there? There's no one. You and only me. We sing. We lilt our chamber...And we lie. A thousand years of sleep. And get beards wrinkle old and small and we. Troubleless in our deep...But I dream. Roots come growing. Slowly and tangle in. And roots come more. And fat and thick. And roots come fast. Roots fast in. Roots seek us. Catch us. Roots that want our head. Our eyes. We move about. The trees will have us. Roots growing in the bursting through our skulls. Through in through our brains. Seeking out our noses. Seeking out our eyes for. Strangle. Choking out the air. Mangle organs. Tangle pain with us. The worming earth...Grow life around and choke the air. Claw us. Snare us. Grow through our hearts."And this perfect sentence: "When she sees me she's both hands."
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It was an epiphanic reading of Ulysses on a train ride that changed Eimear McBride’s approach to writing. What must it have been like to be in her own mind for those six intense months of writing this? Ten years it took to find a publisher. I think most publishers’ minions likely couldn’t imagine stacking this in the mid-aisle tables of Walmart/Tesco and just tossed it in the WTF pile.
    “I’m having bile thoughts. Great green ones of spite and their sloppedy daughters with tongues too long to keep in their mouths.”

    It is a wildly askew balance, that of the creative imagination of the author and the dearth of one in the publisher. Ruled by sheep-flocks of marketers and number-crunchers, not readers. Still, the book managed to float up to the adoring notice of the critics.

    This is a perfect title, for the story, for the writing style.
    “They polyester tight-packed womanhood aflower in pink and blue or black and green coats if the day has rain. Their boots in the hallway, crusty with cow dung or wet muck. If in Sunday skirts, every pleat a landscape of their grown-up bodies. Tired. Under- touched. Flesh having run all night after the cows. Flesh carry sacks of turf up lanes from the shed and spurt out child and child and child. Son he has wanted. Girl he did not.”

    The thoughts don’t obey boundaries, so neither do the words. It’s a feat of articulating inarticulateness. A paradox.
    “Later it ran up me. Legs stomach knees chest up head. Like smoke in my lungs to be coughed out. I’d throw up excitement. What is it? Like a nosebleed. Like a freezing pain. I felt me not me. Turning to the sun. Feel the roast of it. Like sunburn. Like a hot sunstroke. Like globs dropping in. Through my hair. Spat skin with it. Blank my eyes the dazzle. Huge shatter. Me who is just new. Fallen out of the sky. What. Is lust it? That’s it. The first splinter. I. Give in scared. If I would. Stop. Him. Oh God. Is a mortal mortal sin.”

    It is like an impressionist painting. If you try to impose preconceived notions of sentence, paragraph structure (artificial superfluous layers in a way), then you will drown in the chaotic fragments. Instead, let it settle upon you like a diaphanous layer of understanding. It is the impression of it that will fill in the details.

    “Something awful’s going to. You can’t believe it away.”

    Words, sentences, paragraphs are conventional tools to convey a story. They are separate from the story. Here, they are part of the narrator. They are her thoughts.
    The story isn’t new. It is tragic, it is brutal, and it is a sadly familiar kind of tale.
    But the telling of it…the writing…that is sublime.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I almost didn’t make it past page 3 of A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing. I mean, what do you make of prose like this?He says I can’t be waiting for it all the time. I’d give my eyes to fix him but. The heart cannot be wrung and wrung. And she like calmest Virgin Mary sitting on the bed. Hands warming up her sides for. What’re you saying? Breath. Going? Leaving? But he’s just stopped dying. This one’s to come. Please don’t no I won’t stop you. could never make you do a thing. You’ll support us. Aren’t you great? Oh the house is mine. It’s for the best. For who you me? Board my body up. I’m not for loving. Anymore. I’ll live for housework. Dressing kids. And you for mortgage new shoes spuds. Can’t live short hope but gas bills long and paid on time too. Oh so kind. Aren’t you the fine shape of a man.It took some effort to understand the first chapter of this book in which the girl, still in utero, describes her older brother’s brain tumor and surgery, and the devastating impact of the boy’s illness on his parents’ marriage. And things don’t get any better once the unnamed girl enters the world. Her family is poor. Her brother’s intellectual development is slow and he is teased by classmates. Her mother is deeply religious, and convinced of the power of prayer to solve all of life’s problems. The girl becomes a victim of both verbal and sexual abuse, and lacking much-needed emotional support, she adopts extremely unhealthy behaviors as an adolescent and young adult. Eventually you can see a climax building, and it’s not pretty. In fact, it’s pretty devastating.This book is unrelentingly bleak. Nothing good happens. Ever. But once I got past the choppy, disjointed writing style I found it surprisingly effective at conveying a mood, a tone. I was immersed in the girl’s world and could almost literally feel her pain. It’s not a book I’d recommend to just anyone, but if you are intrigued by its experimental nature and can deal with some very disturbing themes, you will be rewarded.