A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Review

As usual, when I got home from work and saw a package with my name on it, I was very excited.  "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing" had arrived.  Anyone who loves books knows that thrill of knowing you have something new to read.

I chose to read "A Girl is a Half Formed Thing" is the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother.  Their relationship starts even before the girl is born, and is shaped largely around her brothers childhood brain tumor.

Amazon describes it as a book that: "...tells the story of a young girl’s devastating adolescence as she and her brother, who suffers from a brain tumor, struggle for a semblance of normalcy in the shadow of sexual abuse, denial, and chaos at home. Plunging readers inside the psyche of a girl isolated by her own dangerously confusing sexuality, pervading guilt, and unrelenting trauma...."

I thought I could get into the story so I opened the book and started reading.

"For you.  You'll soon.  You'll give her name.  in the stitches of her skin she'll wear you say."

My brow crinkled up.  I skimed the page to see more of the same.  And the next page.  And the next.

Surely the whole book can't be written like this I thought.  I opened to a random page towards the middle.

"Sister be a brother sister fixer of her woes.  Am I like that?  Am I that thing it seems yes.  So ho ho on the phone."

And another random page,

"Hands are.  Greasy with old or.  They come.  Here are two.  Two with them with cans or them six-pack."

So, okay, the whole book is written like that.

I have to say I TRIED to read the book.  I really tried.  I put HOURS into reading the first 42 pages of this 229 page book.  I had to re-read and re-read and re-read parts to even begin to understand what was happening.  I'm still not sure if I was understanding some of the scenes properly.

I very rarely dislike a book so much that I don't finish reading it.  I have forced myself to the ends of some horrible things, but 42 pages was all of this I could take.  I simply could not keep going.

That's not to say that this is a BAD book.  It has won multiple awards, so it must be a good book in literary terms. But as a casual reader of fiction just for the joy of reading and I see why it took Eimear McBride almost a decade to get it published (as the back cover of the novel says)

I have to give "A girl is a half formed thing." Just one star.

I received this book from the Blogging for Books program in exchange for this review.