The Lesser Bohemians - Couverture rigide

McBride, Eimear

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0571327850 ISBN 13 : 9780571327850

Editeur : Faber & Faber, 2016

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

Eimear McBride's energetic, sensuous The Lesser Bohemians.has opened up new possibilities for writing about sex. (Lara Feigel Observer Books of the Year)

After McBride won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, many wondered if her next novel would sustain that same intensely original, stream-of-consciousness prose style. The Lesser Bohemians, about a young Irish woman, recently arrived in London, who falls for an older man, is softer in tone and subject matter but confirms McBride as an exciting literary talent. (Rebecca Rose Financial Times Book of the Year)

Though some found the contrast between her fractured main narrative voice and the inclusion of a more conventionally told story of abuse jarring, with only her second novel she has achieved the near-impossible - finding a new way to write about sex and intimacy. (Justine Jordan Guardian Books of the Year)

Without ever passing judgment, The Lesser Bohemians situates itself at that point of moral, sexual and grammatical uncertainty where ... 'pure is indivisible from its reverse.' For me it is the ability to delve so deeply into all of this, more or less regardless, that makes for the unique talent- the wilful, sensuous generosity - of Eimear McBride. (LRB)

McBride isn't an old-fashioned despot writer. The take-it-or-leave-it arrogance is absent. The confidence and the capacity are as good as anyone's, male or female, but... there's an openness, an inclusivity, a distinct lack of God-almightyness, that makes reading her such a pleasure. (Jeanette Winterson The New York Times Book Review)

McBride does something rather dazzling ... What is new in Eimear McBride's work is the way she uses a fractured interior language to depict sexual life and sexual trauma, to tell the truth about the body. (TLS)

It broke my heart several times over and on each occasion I had to stop to cry. McBride has made something strange and beautiful - well worth its difficulties. (The Evening Standard)

Linguistic joys and surprises on every page... There is a lot of sex in this book: sometimes painful and violent, mostly loving and often ecstatic, with McBride equally able to convey physical sensation and emotional intimacy ... this extraordinary novel deserves all the success of McBride's first. --(The New Statesman)

McBride is always brilliant on her central theme - the paradox that it is shame that makes us behave shamefully. --(The Irish Times)

The Lesser Bohemians" is every bit as stylistically resourceful as "Girl," every bit as urgent and authentic. ... For a second time, Ms. McBride has channeled the mental life of a narrator with an intensity, a lack of mediation, that few authors can achieve. "The Lesser Bohemians" is a full-on sensory experience-and another superlative achievement. --(Wall Street Journal)

Extrait :

THE AUDITION

Saturday 12 March 1994

I move. Cars move. Stock, it bends light. City opening itself behind. Here’s to be for its life is the bite and would be start of mine.

Remember. Look up. Like the face of god was lighting me through those grilles above, through windows once a church this hall, and old men watch below. Come in. Please go straight to the stage. I snag my skirt on continents of paint chipped out black by toes and heels, by fingers picking clicking for years. I’d do too if I was here. When I’ll be here. Will I be here? Take a moment, they say Then let’s have your first piece. I. Suck antique air and. Go.

    I don’t know but it’s done by some switch of the brain, this fooling off the girl I am. Giving tendril words to the dust-sunned air or twist from my mouth weeds of her until she’s made her way through time from Arden, Greece or whoever wrote these lines of words learned in my head. Innocent to the work of balconies or beds, I let her talk run free in me and bring her for the age.
    And after.
    They bait me. Strip me a bit. Ask who and you’re young, why not see the world first? Shouldn’t actors see so many things? But I’m sure I have in the deep of my brain. Against my tick-tocking minus in life – books and films, fancied plays I’ll be in, men surely meet, New York taxis maybe run for in elegant heels. Shouldn’t these outweigh what dun school skirts there’s been in this bud of life I own? And lower too, just left unsaid, time when life was something else but I’ve understood a whole world, all remaining is To Do. Can they not see this print on me? Ho ho, they flock You’re all grown-up certainly but second speech, if you would?
    Seated on the floor this, lino underfoot. Her giving out little thoughts, some simple things she’s understood. This lady in her simple skirt, hands open to a gentle earth and though I’m close inside my voice fills wide into the calm. Beseeches but such a quiet way. And this time they are with me, know in her I’ve done my time. May hold her up for looking at and gently set her down. Then let chipped paint oceans roll me back to their shore, hopeful as a breeze. And they only Thank you we’ll let you know. That’s it? Letter next week in the post. Go on out through the canteen. So my audition’s done and can’t be undone now.

From their path I stroll to the City no city, I think to Camden Town. London unspooling itself behind. Traffic all gadding in the midday shine. So many people. So much stone. All at once and streets ahead. I’ll bring it with. I will make myself of life here for life is this place and would be start of mine.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Faber & Faber
• Date d'édition: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0571327850
• ISBN 13: 9780571327850
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 320