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The Lesser Bohemians: A Novel Hardcover – Deckle Edge, September 20, 2016

by Eimear McBride (Author)

3.9 500 ratings

Editors' pick Best Literature & Fiction

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Winner of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction
Shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award
Shortlisted for the 2016 Goldsmiths Prize
Shortlisted for the 2016 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards Eason Novel of the Year

The breathtaking new novel from Eimear McBride, about an extraordinary, all-consuming love affair

Eimear McBride’s debut novel A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING was published in 2013 to an avalanche of praise: nominated for a host of literary awards, winner of the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction and the inaugural Goldsmith’s Prize, declared by Vanity Fair to be "One of the most groundbreaking pieces of literature to come from Ireland, or anywhere, in recent years," McBride’s bold, wholly original prose immediately established her as a literary force. Now, she brings her singular voice to an unlikely love story.

One night an eighteen-year-old Irish girl, recently arrived in London to attend drama school, meets an older man – a well-regarded actor in his own right. While she is naive and thrilled by life in the big city, he is haunted by more than a few demons, and the clamorous relationship that ensues risks undoing them both.

A captivating story of passion and innocence, joy and discovery set against the vibrant atmosphere of 1990s London over the course of a single year, THE LESSER BOHEMIANS glows with the eddies and anxieties of growing up, and the transformative intensity of a powerful new love.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for THE LESSER BOHEMIANS

"[A] propulsive coming-of-age story... imbued with a captivating sense of youthful excitement and vulnerability."
—The New Yorker

“The confidence and the capacity are as good as anyone’s…there’s an openness, an inclusivity, a distinct lack of God-almightyness, that makes reading [McBride] such a pleasure.”
—Jeannette Winterson, New York Times Book Review

“The Lesser Bohemians” is every bit as stylistically resourceful as “Girl,” every bit as urgent and authentic. It is also more well-rounded, better. The narrative voice will be recognizable to readers of the earlier novel, capturing a snapshot of thought at the moment before grammar constrains it, what the author has referred to as a “stream of pre-consciousness.” The word order is once again scrambled to ingenious (and poetic) effect, clauses pared down to their impressionistic essences…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

“Spellbinding…[H]er stunning second novel shows that she has not only acquired fresh surfaces to work on, she has also developed exciting new brush strokes…McBride’s prose sings…The Lesser Bohemians recalls Samuel Beckett and Henry Miller. Ultimately, though, it is a fiercely original work, an extraordinary novel crafted by a fearless modern writer.”
—Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The Lesser Bohemians is a love story, yes, but it is really an electric and beautiful account of how the walls of self shift and buckle and are rebuilt.”
—NPR.org

“Joycean…The novel is filled with intricate, imaginative wordplay…crafted by one of the most admired young talents in fiction.”
—Scott Simon, NPR

“[A] powerful novel about desire.”
—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Not often does a novel so expertly seduce its readers into an alternate state of consciousness that it mimics an actual dream state, where everything solid is hazily just beyond reach. Eimear McBride, with her deployment of modernist technique reminiscent of James Joyce, elicits such a mental state throughout her new novel, The Lesser Bohemians ― really,
it’s the only way to read it.”
—Huffington Post

“This is above all, a love story: bare, achingly romantic, and crushingly felt.”
—Booklist, starred review

About the Author

Eimear McBride was born in 1976 and grew up in Ireland. She currently lives in Norwich with her family. The Lesser Bohemians is her second novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hogarth (September 20, 2016)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101903481
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101903483
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.55 x 1.05 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,725,959 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #14,559 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #72,064 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- #77,005 in Women's Literature & Fiction

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3.9 500 ratings

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Eimear McBride

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Eimear McBride studied acting at Drama Centre London. Her debut novel 'A Girl is a Half-formed Thing' won the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize, Irish Novel of the Year, the Bailey's Prize for Women's Fiction, The Desmond Elliott Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award. Her second novel 'The Lesser Bohemians' won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for many others. She is the inaugural holder of the Beckett Research Centre's Creative Fellowship at the University of Reading. She writes and reviews for the Guardian, New Statesman and the Times Literary Supplement and she lives in London.

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Jaques

Without being prurient, it's all about sex

Reviewed in the United States on October 7, 2016

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Occasionally it happens that I hear an author interview on the radio or in a newspaper and am intrigues enough to order the book in response. This book is one case where the instant order provided instant reading gratification. Einear McBride describes a growing--and graphic -- sexual awareness and exploration of a young 18 year old acting student with an established actor twice her age. McBride creates her own grammar without much punctuation which is part of the initial mystery for thte reader. As the older man begins to confess a sordid childhood and turbulent life, the story and the prose style become clearer. As the veil pf the past is lifted in the narrative, so does the language become more accessible. The book is hardly prurient while at the same time being almost entirely devoted to sex. Thus the author brings us into this torrid relationship while at the same time having the focus on the spiritual growth of the two central characters admitting they are falling in love. It's a winner.

11 people found this helpful

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The Mother Booker

'Less would have meant so much More'

Reviewed in the United States on September 13, 2016

The Lesser Bohemians
By
Eimear McBride

I truly loved the early pages of this book but I was deeply disappointed as the book progressed. Initially the sex scenes were quite brilliant and I have great admiration for the author by the way she portrayed such intimacies so honestly.

Repetition dulls the senses as does a sudden change in style. I did not enjoy reading the detailed account of Stephen’s life and as a reader I felt thrown somehow in the latter stages of the book.

This author writes so poetically and has no need for prolonged pages of insignificant subject matter.

You’ve read it all before; this story of a young Irish girl moving across the water to England; but never quite like this. Her baggage is her guilt. Desperate to live her new life free of restrictions and encumbrance; she longs to make the transition from ‘girl’ to woman.

‘Dampened to fresh cheeked I go up the stone steps, in amid the already- belonged.’

‘Yes I’ll be fired glass where stray sand has been sifted and lit.’

‘It’s just space but I have so much distance to make and this seems such a wilful world.’

Eimear McBride manages to captivate her reader in the early pages of this intriguing book.

‘I will make myself of life here for life is this place and would be start of mine.’

‘London’s ‘utterness’ making ‘outers’ of us all.’

‘Here in the ‘homesickless’ new.’

She; whom we later learn is Eily, falls in love with him, Stephen. (Twice her age and more)

‘Turn Turn the blood in my cheek. Eyes accumulate his universe.’

She asks him his belief:

‘The lifelong struggle to remain indifferent.’

She contemplates her feelings:

‘It’s not everyone you’re not lonely with.’

She loves him:

‘I follow him with the track of my eye, cheek to the shelf and tired by the weight of all I don’t know.’

He has endured the terrible trials and tribulations of life, but not as we know it. The reader is shocked by the endless revelations of degradation and depravity.

A love story ensues with no detail spared.

In my opinion, The Lesser Bohemians is a deeply disturbing book. There are moments of brilliance. The sense of place is profound throughout. The intensity of this book at times can be exhausting and laborious. The ‘shock factor’ waned with my enthusiasm as I read.

For me, ‘Less’ really would have meant so much ‘More’ in this novel.

4 people found this helpful

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Roger Brunyate

A Year of Drama

Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2016

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

He never. He really did. No teacher Never, nor anyone else. Bang
out blatant about going permissive. Noting, I note another face
laughing just like me. Trying not. To be mature. To keep the
rict from boiling over. Of an age she also seems so I Hello when
I'd not usually. Then she, sloe-eyed with slowest smiles, says
Cuppa? In the Canteen? And so wriggle in. Slip in. Remember people
are blind to under your skin or. Under my skin now.

Irish girl on her first day at drama school in London. The teacher tells them to remember to use condoms. She, a virgin still, is both shocked and validated in her desire for new life, new experiences and, starting here, new friends. The sex part will come soon enough (together with an enormous amount of drinking, smoking, and stoning). She meets in a bar an older man, 38, twice her age, an actor too, somewhat well-known, although she does not recognize him. The novel is about that first year of hers in London, not so much about drama school (which disappointed me a little), but a lot about that relationship.

As I noted in my review of McBride's first novel, A GIRL IS A HALF-FORMED THING, the secret to her writing is hearing it aloud. Listening to a YouTube video of her reading a short excerpt unlocked the rest for me. Or more or less. It still sounded strange, though there were moments where the pain and violence of that book that could not have been written any other way. Here, the language is most appropriate for the sex. I have seldom seen so much bedroom writing in a novel outside of Henry Miller, but it did not offend me. In the earlier stages at least, she seemed very real in her discoveries of shame, pain, and soon enough eagerness. What did upset me was the amount of dissolution in between. I began to wonder how the protagonist ever had time to learn anything at that drama school, with so much of it spent on getting drunk, or stoned, or recovering from same. But alas I too recognize the craziness of that first year away from home as a fledgling adult, and McBride's fractured syntax, running the gamut from total chaos to sheer poetry,* is as good a way to capture it as any. Much as I would rather forget.

Readers of A GIRL will recall that it is not until quite late in that book that the story kicks into high gear. So it is here. Both the protagonist and her actor lover (both unnamed for now), bring baggage to their relationship; being older, he carries more than her. As the novel nears its end, however, much of this back-story gets revealed, first in hints, then more completely. The characters acquire names. The jagged sentences begin to smooth out, without ever completely losing Eimear McBride's characteristic lilt; apart from that, it might almost be a different author. Whereas A GIRL used much the same language throughout, only later showing the reason for it, THE LESSER BOHEMIANS tells its story partly through the transformation of language. Is it too easy a device? Does it make for too sentimental an ending? Perhaps—if you see this as her story, which is how it starts. But having read a couple of reviews which see it more as his evolution, I am changing my tune on this one, raising my original three stars to four. There is some painful truth in here, but you do need the patience to winkle it out.

======

*I had a curious experience while reading. As it happens, I am currently writing a long poem, a parody pastoral in loose iambic pentameters, which has given me the habit of testing lines in my head for scansion. And there were times when, mentally reading McBride aloud, I heard her prose slipping into the familiar verse patterns, or variants of them. Which confirmed for me that much of what she is writing is poetry. But my tendency to regularize also made me less able to grasp the special quality of her poetry-prose, with its unpredictability of rhythm, its run-ons, sudden stops, and occasional surprise of concealed rhymes.

19 people found this helpful

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Patrick Cronin

Get Ready for Magic

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2017

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This is the best book I've read in years! When I began the read on Kindle, I was 10 pages in and I know this was going to be magical. She writes as an actor thinks. She writes in subtext like a poet of the soul. Reading her is as if you were reading James Joyce for the first time only without the density. My second thought as I read this work was that it was like reading Ginsberg's Howl for the first time or Diana Di Prima's Nightmares ("Get your cut throat off my knife"). Is she a "difficult read" as some reviews have indicated? I don't think so unless you can only think in literal lines. This book was so good I went on line and bought two signed firsts of it....that's how good it is.

6 people found this helpful

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Alysson Oliveira

Sob a pele

Reviewed in Brazil on December 28, 2016

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Quando se refere a quem conta a história em uma ficção, geralmente se usa a expressão “voz narrativa”. Esse, no entanto, não é o caso nos dois romances da irlandesa Eimear McBride. Não é voz quem narra, mas uma mente. Mas nem por isso também acho que se deva chamar de fluxo de pensamento, porque é tudo tão fraturado que, em suas histórias, o pensamento nem se formou. Talvez o mais próximo da experiência de ler A girl is a half-formed thing e o novo THE LESSER BOHEMIANS é dizer que a trama é contada por uma “mente narrativa”.

McBride deve muito aos modernistas – especialmente ao seu conterrâneo James Joyce – e, com seus malabarismos e pirotecnias léxicas e estruturais, encontra uma maneira de colocar no papel uma mente em “formação”. No caso do A girl... talvez a formação não seja exatamente a palavra – pois tudo parece estar se esvaindo no processo de amadurecimento da protagonista-narradora. Aqui, sim, é um romance de formação e o mediador disso é o sexo.

A protagonista-narradora – cujo nome é revelado a poucas páginas do final, e isso faz sentido – é uma jovem irlandesa de 18 anos que muda-se para Londres, em meados dos de 1990, para estudar interpretação. Logo conhece um sujeito de 38 anos – idem em relação ao nome – com quem tem sua primeira relação, e entra uma jornada de descoberta não apenas sexual, mas também emocional. São duas almas em busca de compreensão. Ele, no entanto, vem repleto de feridas emocionais e físicas – tudo será revelado com o tempo –; e ela, apesar de jovem também tem lá suas marcas.

McBride descreve o sexo sem meias-palavras, mas ela não está interessada em detalhes físico, isso seria fácil demais, qualquer linguagem daria conta. Ela busca a profundidade dos relacionamentos físico, emocional e espiritual, daí sua busca por uma forma de narrar. Daí também a fragmentação, o truncamento das frases. Ninguém – e aí inclui o leitor, mas provavelmente não a autora – sabe o que está acontecendo. É um mundo a ser descoberto pela narradora.

É uma história de amour fou, como tantas outras que já se viu e se leu, mas, ao mesmo tempo, há um fôlego novo, cuja sintaxe transita entre o óbvio e o extraordinário.

A estratégia da escritora é que entremos sob a pele da dupla de personagens, e, assim como eles, tenhamos uma experiência em primeira-mão, no momento em que acontece, sem tempo para decantar qualquer tipo de compreensão. Por isso, The Lesser Bohemians é um furacão de romance que desperta, ao longo de suas pouco mais de 300 páginas, as mais diversas reações – desde ao amor até o ódio. Mas ao final é impossível negar que estamos diante de uma grande escritora, de uma obra que talvez precise de tempo (que ironia dado tudo o que há nela!) para ser compreendida.

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Crystal Moura

The challenging prose suddenly became beautifully poetic. A perfect combination to go with such ...

Reviewed in Australia on August 22, 2017

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I began this book wondering how the heck I was meant to read that prose, but after a few chapters I suddenly found I couldn't put it down. The challenging prose suddenly became beautifully poetic. A perfect combination to go with such a gripping, honest love story.

One person found this helpful

Elfie

Best book I've read for ages...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2016

Verified Purchase

This book was the most absorbing read I have had in a long time. I found it by chance as I'd been looking through Amazon for a recent literary novel to snuggle down with. Having started by looking at books that had been short listed or won awards I came across Eimear's debut novel, A Girl is a Half Formed Thing, but decided that the subject matter would be too much to cope with. The Lesser Bohemians was due to be released a few days later, so I peeked in the Look Inside and fell in love with the writing style and the starting point and narrative of a young woman who has moved to London to study drama. I ordered it on the strength of that.
Once I started reading I couldn't put it down. It was captivating, in all kinds of ways. It is written in an unusual style with lots of quirks that would ordinarily have been irritating, such as incomplete sentences, rambling thought-led prose, ad-hoc intermittent rhythm and rhyming and (oh sin of sins) speech without speech marks. But all of those things merge to convey the mood of the times, the situation, the characters' outlooks and the complexity and confusion of it all for a young woman thrown into her adult life where the only person she can rely on is herself. For all of that, I found it a charming, emotional, evocative and touching tale of human want, will and truths. It lingers on some sensitive issues when delving into the history of the main characters (how many Jeremy Kyle shows could they appear in?) and I'm not going to spoil the surprise here by telling you what they all are, but the harrowing recollections of an abusive mother's behaviour and actions are a difficult read even if they are relevant to the story. However, it is a tale of romance, lust, seduction, mutual understanding, love of all kinds, and the realisation by all involved that true love is the most beautiful gift and does not necessarily arrive swiftly, smoothly or without its own repercussions on the soul. It also tells of undiscussed decisions that are made to protect lovers and the beloved, as well as the self. It is written so that you feel you are inside someone else's head, looking out at their life and surroundings. If you read it quickly it flows like a stream of consciousness and you find you can translate it almost like when you're on holiday and a second language starts to dawn on you when you listen to it being spoken. It is a youthful, optimistic story, albeit with bravery and fragility showing as blatantly as it does when you are young and travelling without a compass or a map, or any idea of where you are heading. Quite miraculous for words printed on a page. I've sent a copy to my best friend.

8 people found this helpful

Tim Benson

Relationships in turmoil

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 4, 2016

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Highly sexual in content but written, in a style that was difficult to master even at the end of the book I was still having to re read passages to try and make sense. Young love, old love, incest all illustrated in this fascinating account of a young innocent out on the streets of North London. Not easy reading at times but a challenging book that explores a series of disastrous relationships damaged by previous abuse. A frightening tale showing how abusive relationships continue to damage individuals in their future attempts at finding happiness.

8 people found this helpful

Kathi Anderson

Terrible

Reviewed in Canada on October 10, 2016

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Terrible, difficult book.

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