{"id":6161,"date":"2016-11-01T08:16:01","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T12:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6161"},"modified":"2016-11-01T08:16:01","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T12:16:01","slug":"the-lesser-bohemians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6161","title":{"rendered":"*****The Lesser Bohemians"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"london-theater\"

photo: Andy Roberts, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Eimear McBride — You\u2019ll have trouble with this book. I did. About page 40, I wondered, \u201cis she ever going to write in complete sentences?\u201d About page 90, I thought, \u201cis it ever going to be about anything but sex?\u201d The answer to both these questions was \u201calmost never.\u201d But The Lesser Bohemians<\/em> is much more than a literary 50 Shades<\/em>. And I\u2019m glad I didn\u2019t give up on it.<\/p>\n

Ireland native McBride won the Bailey\u2019s Women\u2019s Prize and many, many other accolades for her 2013 book, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing<\/em>, and when I saw she\u2019d written another one, I jumped at the chance to read it.<\/p>\n

In Bohemians<\/em>, released last month, an 18-year-old Irish girl\u2014a drama student in London\u2014meets \u00a0meets an older man, a handsome actor near 40. She isn\u2019t a virgin much longer. There\u2019s a lot of sex, a lot of cigarettes, a lot of alcohol. We don\u2019t even learn these characters\u2019 names until very far along. He\u2019s Stephen, he calls her Eily. Her full name, her real name, E\u00edl\u00eds, is used only once, two pages from the end, when their identity is finally clear to each other and themselves, perhaps. Their urgent and scouring intimacy is McBride\u2019s way of flaying any falseness from the characters and laying them (literally) bare.<\/p>\n

The story approaches somewhat closer to a conventional first-person narrative (sentences!) in the second half, in a long section in which Stephen tells her about his past, a true heart-breaker there. Most of it is written in almost a stream-of-consciousness way, and McBride is often compared to James Joyce for that reason. Conversations are presented in long paragraphs, uninterrupted by such reader-aids as quotation marks, but once I got into it, I didn\u2019t have much trouble following.<\/p>\n

Emphasizing the difficulty of it risks underpraising how mesmerizing it is. McBride\u2019s approach forces you to slow down and really absorb what\u2019s being said, as she fractures the rules of punctuation and grammar. As NPR reviewer Annalisa Quinn<\/a> said, \u201cBy sacrificing grammatical precision she gets emotional and psychological sense\u2014even as those things are in themselves impossibly and inherently imprecise, like light or color.\u201d Or love, I\u2019d add. \u00a0A sample:<\/p>\n

On that said Saturday, she (Eily\u2019s friend) helps me move into the (friend\u2019s ex-boyfriend\u2019s) flat. Tired white walls. No curtains or blinds. But perfect. Landlady free. The I hope you\u2019re proud of yourself, ringing in my ears and lug my stuff from the Safeway\u2019s trolley I nicked and pushed down to Patshull Road. I think I\u2019ll blank him, she decides. Fair enough, I say, blu-tacking Betty Blue up. I pity you, he\u2019s such an–. Keep it down, I live here now. I bet he shags you before the term is out. I wouldn\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

Conventionally, this would be handled something like this:<\/p>\n

On that said Saturday, she helps me move into the flat. Tired white walls. No curtains or blinds. But perfect. Landlady free. The \u201cI hope you\u2019re proud of yourself,\u201d ringing in my ears and lug my stuff from the Safeway\u2019s trolley I nicked and pushed down to Patshull Road.<\/em>
\n\u201cI think I\u2019ll blank him,\u201d she decides.<\/em>
\n“Fair enough,\u201d I say, blu-tacking Betty Blue up.<\/em>
\n\u201cI pity you, he\u2019s such an–.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cKeep it down, I live here now.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI bet he shags you before the term is out.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Lesser Bohemians<\/em> is an unforgettable book about two characters I came to really care about. I can picture their lives and prospects and I appreciate an author who doesn\u2019t believe she has to make my job as a reader too easy.
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