The powerfully broken language she used to tell the story of a young Irish woman who survives childhood abuse and later seeks out increasingly brutal violence was lauded by critics, and she won two major British literary prizes. The Irish teen girl who opens “The Lesser Bohemians” carries some of the weight that crushed the protagonist of “A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing.” Dying to rid herself of that direst of childhood burdens, virginity, the narrator finds a man — the man — in a pub; they banter about books and then head back to his filthy bedsit. An actor famous in theater circles, he has a past, a daughter her age, and plenty of damage under his skin. McBride herself trained as an actor, and the dialogue that dominates the prose of this book is sharp and entertaining. “The Lesser Bohemians” tries to capture that atmosphere, and nails the mess of being a teenager with sudden access to booze and hearts and sex. [...] a novel that starts out about a young woman in the world becomes about a couple’s ups and downs, and then just about him. Perhaps, if one is feeling generous, this is a matter of the novel’s form echoing its content — the girl finds more meaning in the man than in her own pursuits. At the high point of their relationship, a dinner party scene is summed up as Talking about theatre. [...] in their weft I lull, tracing his nails, lighting on every new lit bit of him until Time for bed he yawns. Unlike McBride’s first book, in which familiar subject matter was interpreted anew through the stuttering, circular form of the language, here McBride can’t quite escape the cliche.
‘the Lesser Bohemians,’ By Eimear Mcbride
By Marthine Satris, San Francisco Chronicle: Entertainment
Sun, 12/04/2016 - 6:30am
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