A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

By Eimear McBride (2013)

1. This story of a young woman’s relationship with her dying brother and of her own chaotic unraveling is evocatively told. From the first page of this stream of consciousness saga it’s clear that the protagonist’s disintegration has already begun. It begins, “For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say.” Some books lull you in. This one challenges you to stay and it’s worth it. It’s a discomforting—but also exhilarating—story...

A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

By Eimear McBride (2013)

1. This story of a young woman’s relationship with her dying brother and of her own chaotic unraveling is evocatively told. From the first page of this stream of consciousness saga it’s clear that the protagonist’s disintegration has already begun. It begins, “For you. You’ll soon. You’ll give her name. In the stitches of her skin she’ll wear your say.” Some books lull you in. This one challenges you to stay and it’s worth it. It’s a discomforting—but also exhilarating—story of vulnerability, isolation, cruelty and love. As the brother succumbs to an agonizing illness, the reader is inside the narrator’s head, following her thoughts on the brother she loves, her mother’s religiosity, her depraved uncle and her own sexual awakening and ultimate exploitation. This is not an easy book or a hopeful one but it is a wild ride, beautiful in its emotional truth.

Starve Acre

By Andrew Michael Hurley (2019)

2. Here is a gothic thriller for people who think they don’t like that sort of thing. Richard and Juliette have lost a child. In their rural home, Starve Acre, they circle their grief like two satellites that cannot come together. Juliette seeks solace in an occultist group called the Beacons, who promise to guide her through her loss. Richard distracts himself looking for the rumored Stythewaite Oak—the local hanging tree. During a séance-like ritual, Juliette is offered hope that transforms her. Richard unearths the skeleton of a hare. Alternating between these two stories is a history of their town and how it contributed to the decline, and ultimately the death, of their son. That the supernatural sits so easily with the psychological is the most admirable aspect of this novel. For some readers it may simply be a mystery story filled with menace, but others may read it as an evocative account of a family destroyed by tragedy.

The Butcher Boy

By Patrick McCabe (1992)

3. All that Francie Brady really wants is to live in a nice house with nice parents and for a return to the good old days when Joe Purcell was his best friend. All that he gets is thwarted dreams that turn him into the eponymous butcher boy. Francie’s father is an alcoholic who abuses his mother. For a long time, Francie negotiates his troubled life with the comforts of escapist humor. He revels in his friendship with Joe and in the pleasure of living vicariously through the idealized experiences of his immigrant uncle, Alo. The Nugents are the antithesis of the Brady family. Mrs. Nugent is the archetypal gossiping neighbor. Her son, Phillip—Francie’s classmate—wears a smart blazer, plays the piano and has an enviable collection of comics. That Francie will be the undoing of the Nugents is revealed on the first page, as he hides under a tangle of briars from an angry mob of townspeople, outraged at him for something he’s done to Mrs. Nugent. This occasionally comic but always dark story set in 1960s Ireland takes us from youthful aspirations to friendship to the troubled mind of a teenage boy who never had a hope.

First Love

By Gwendoline Riley (2017)

4. Neve is married to Edwyn. He was not her first love. In fact, in this account of a woman’s apparent surrender to an abusive relationship, there is only fleeting acknowledgment that there ever was anything like love involved. Neve relates her life story in disordered flashbacks. Her father was abusive and her mother weak and dependent. Perhaps no surprise then that she describes herself as someone who doesn’t know how to love. After the breakdown of one lukewarm love affair Neve spends most of her time alone or with her landlord’s cat. Until, that is, she marries Edwyn, an event with no friends or family present, and proceeds to a relationship consisting of a chronic war of words with no clear winner. The novel’s considerable energy derives largely from the couple’s vicious sparring matches. Filled with repellent characters though it may be, it still manages to be humorous at times, and compellingly original, always.

Sisters

By Daisy Johnson (2020)

5. The literary brilliance of this novel won’t distract from the fact that it is above all a mystery waiting to be resolved. Clues to the truth are scattered between tense scenes. The sisters July and September have fled to the country with their mother, Sheela, who, for reasons as yet unrevealed, takes to her room and closes the door on her daughters. The sisters wander around the dilapidated house, which is filled with other people’s belongings, among them old food and an ant farm. They explore the debris-ridden beach, shrink away from an old bird-watching box and are finally drawn to a party of local teenagers. It is September who controls July, protects her from school bullies and also endangers her with reckless dares. Their relationship is both destructive and indestructible. Glimpses into their past reveal a history of abandonment by their father, of humiliation at school and of an unspecified disaster. Nothing about this thriller makes sense until the ending, when truth is revealed and everything understood.