The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
Hardcover, read August 2019
“It’s not everyone you’re not lonely with.”
Eimear McBride is basically my hero: reading her books feels like peeling off someone’s skin and wearing it, and that being the only way to ever truly know another person, in exactly as painful and horrible a way as that sounds. Her writing is like nothing else: it is jagged and exposed and aggressive, it is momentous, it is slippery and malleable. Her books do not tell stories, they tell feelings. In fact, it is almost as though they have no interest in telling stories: they want the fallout of what has happened, brushing past what happened quickly, painfully, without lingering in the what of it all.
“I will remember this because, even though this morning’s not much of his life, it’s very much of mine. Whatever happens, nothing will be the same after and nothing will be like it again. Right, he says It’s getting late. We should go or you’ll miss your train.”
Both A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing and The Lesser Bohemians are intense, graphic stories of trauma and abuse. If you saw my thoughts on A Little Life, you’ll know I have little tolerance for books that use trauma as a plot device or for character development; and yet, we do need to be able to talk about abuse and trauma, especially in books. I think there is some kind of line between telling about it and using it, between healing and trauma porn, and if I’m being completely honest I’m not sure where McBride’s books sit. The abuse is horrific, the fallout in equal measure. I lean towards placing these books on the healing side of the line because within the books, it is not about the abuse. It is about how a life comes together after the worst things happen to a person, how the shards do and don’t fit together, how each of our shards do and don’t settle into each other, how sometimes they stab inwards, outwards, on purpose, by accident.
(Related: whoever is writing the jacket copy for McBride’s books is the **wrong person** for the job, both books have the worst [untrue, mismatched] descriptions I’ve ever seen.)
“Bodies knowing the other’s well from before but everything else running through now, making it rare. Keeping quiet, for discretion, more. For hearing the secret of our secret thoughts falling between. And the desire that follows, no matter what we do, cannot be spent up and does not let go.”
I do not unconditionally love The Lesser Bohemians. In fact, it’s possible I have a few grave concerns about it. But I still give it five stars, I would still die for McBride’s writing, and I still recommend it fiercely with extreme trigger warnings. (Do not trust the jacket copy, if you need to protect yourself with more details ask someone who’s read it.) I can’t wait for more McBride.
