A Living Book

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride

My dear, dear readers! It’s the first Friday of the month (how delightful October is, I forgot), so my podcast listeners will know what’s coming next.

For the rest of you: welcome to the next (seventh) thrilling installment of the Something Eve Read review of the Something We Read (the podcast™) monthly read. Still workshopping what to call this feature. Supplementary reading feels…not fun? Footnotes feels too obvious (and overdone). Side order? To match le charcuterie? Why does it always come back to food with me? Fear not, I’ll finish this introspective brainstorming session on my own time. We have a most spectacular book to get to! Drumroll or whatever.

The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride !!!!

You guys! I’m not going to bury the lede. This was one of my favorite books I’ve read all year!!!! I’m still thinking about it, still seeing my world through eyes a little bit changed by having read McBride’s words. I recommend it with verve and vigor. And I’m not even going to put any caveats on that. It’s a challenging novel both in form and in content, but it’s good to be challenged. It’s worth it. And you can do hard things, reader. Gag but true.

This is the story of Eily, a seventeen year old from Ireland who wants to be—will be—an actress. The book opens with her audition at an unspecified but presumably prestigious acting school in London. Spoiler alert, she gets in. The novel then follows her through her first year, separated into large sections dedicated to each school term. We don’t’ see her back in Ireland when she’s on break save for a page or two. She’s in London for us. Learning how to live and living there.

We watch as she makes friends, adjusts to the rhythm of her program, goes out on the town, plays and observes and comes into her skin—or at least begins to. She’s still a bit nervous, a bit shy, a bit young, a bit virginal. But she’s working on that. The nervousness and shyness improve, not much to do about the youth, but the virginity will certainly have to go.

Enter Stephen. They meet at a bar. Distracted by his book (Dostoyevsky), he lets the ash of her cigarette fall on her hand. She lets him buy her a drink as reparations. They chat, he say’s come back to mine, she decides might as well, goes home with him, pushes through the nerves, is a woman on a mission. It’s not a total disaster, but it’s certainly not not a disaster. And then it’s over and that’s that right? Until they run into each other at a play.

It’s pretty much off to the races from there. Eily and Stephen endeavor fitfully and with plenty of fuckups to fall in love with each other. It’s no small endeavor for them. Or perhaps the falling isn’t so hard really. It’s identifying the falling and knowing what to do with it while it happens and after that seems to be what causes all the trouble for them.

They are, to put it simply, traumatized people. I almost said damaged but that doesn’t seem fair to them. They have both been hurt in the most grotesque of manners and they have learned how to hurt themselves. They do it well. Being younger, Eily’s wounds are buried under a soil that’s less packed down. Not so for Stephen. It takes him time to reveal himself fully to her. Time that allows for some truly heart wrenching bad behavior. It’s a ride! I hesitate to give anything away because for me Stephen’s story when he finally told it came as such a revelation. But consider this your warning. This material is not for the faint of heart.

It’s a barrage, but McBride handles it deftly and carefully. And more importantly, there’s a point to it. Something happens when Stephen bares his worst wounds. In the exposing of it, the seeing happens. Stephen shows, Eily sees, and so comes the ecstasy. It is the dizzying sensation of letting someone see, feeling safe enough to do so, then being affirmed in your perceived safety. Love, essentially—the most dangerous of propositions. The pleasure (too light a word) of being seen and being held can only be achieved through a complete relinquishing of control, a willingness to throw it all away.

McBride’s ability to capture these sensations so well is attributable to what is, among many notables (!!!!), unarguably the most notable thing about this novel: the way she writes it. Kathryn and I discuss this at length on the pod, and I even read the whole first section (the audition) aloud. So if you’re interested in that, head over here.

To briefly summarize, McBride’s style is untraditional. No interest in grammar, few commas, no quotation marks, no paragraph breaks for dialogue, no adherence to regular syntax or sentence structure. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and digesting it takes some mental work, and probably a little extra time. Despite all that—more likely because of it—I was hooked from page one.

Of course, the first question to ask when a writer throws the rulebook out the window must be why? And then how well? Or maybe actually how well and then why.

How well?

Extremely well. Mind blowingly well. As Kathryn pointed out, McBride’s ability to write 300+ pages in this totally out there style without losing the plot is pretty staggering. Not only does she make it make sense—she makes it good. The sentences (fragments?) are frameable!

Okay, then why?

Well first of all, aesthetic and stylistic choices, when carried out successfully, can stand alone without further justification. Beauty is a reason.

Aside from that though, if you insist, she’s making us pay attention. She’s making us be inside the head, inside the feelings, inside the sensations. She uses this kind of mental, experiential shorthand, halting, hopping, funny, devastating language to make us live Eily’s life. I’ll let it speak for itself.

We’re young and on our own and alive for the first time in a new city.

So the first weekend begins like this, here in the homesickless new.

Here’s nowhere like any life I’ve learned. Even going under, it goes on up. She saying how it’s ugly and I think not. I think it is Metropolis.
Still and so we’re here for Art. She has the tickets while I have a heart that I hope art will burn.

We’re drunk in the bathroom.

Got to go to the loo. But the toilets a maze, now I’m drink undone. Far drunker than I know how to be. Wee. Wash my hands. Stare. Is that really me? The sad of her. Her sad eyes ponder. Ow! Smack on the cheek. Ow! Sorry, I didn’t expect someone there that’ll bruise sorry. Don’t worry     I’m perfect, and stagger out into crashed light.

We’re broken and spiraling.

Put your head down to sleep. But when it starts, the brain sets off. Going with the thought of so many much        before what I did. Straightened out on his bed, naked and laughing with him. One of the two in that good oxygen, taking it hard down into the lung and so glad of each other then….Now I'd like to wake up but the dream keeps going. In through the red and onto cutting off my fingertips.

We’re falling in love for the first time.

And he. Slides down beside me then. Takes me in to the lean of his chest that rises and falls in time with my pulse. The tight of his grip keeping me safe until I am calm and recalled to the smell of his neck. Until my soul re-finds its place.

Then slip back into the smell of him on my sheet. Search out the last of his taste on my lips. Imagine that I’d kept him here. Then think of him, in the rain, out there. That could—if I wanted—make my heart a little break. But I don’t want it to, so it does not.

Dumbfounded even now! What more needs to be said? Can be said? READ THIS BOOK!

Xx

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