Макбрайд Эймер (2)

From the writer of one of the most memorable debuts of recent years, a story of first love and redemption.

One night in London an eighteen year old girl, recently arrived from Ireland to study drama, meets an older actor and a tumultuous relationship ensues. Set across the bedsits and squats of mid-nineties north London, is a story about love and innocence, joy and discovery, the grip of the past and the struggle to be new again.

Eimear McBride's debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist, to read is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable — but it is always a revelation.

Touching on everything from family violence to sexuality and the personal struggle to remain intact in times of intense trauma, McBride writes with singular intensity, acute sensitivity and mordant wit. is moving, funny — and alarming. It is a book you will never forget.