I was really pleased to hear that Norwich-based Eimear McBride has won this prestigious literary prize (and £30,000) for her debut novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, which is a fantastic coup for Eimear, for Norwich as a City of Literature and also for small publishers Galley Beggar Press who took a chance on a book that no other publisher had been confident or courageous enough to take on.
And this is also one book that UEA Creative Writing course can't take the credit for, as Eimear wrote the book in her home country of Ireland nine years ago.
It is an unusual book with a flow and syntax unlike any other. It is described as stream of consciousness writing but it starts with the unformed voice of an unborn child and continues to reflect thoughts and a thinking process that is disjointed and incomplete in the way that the language of our thinking is.
I heard Eimear read an extract at the very first launch in The Bookhive in Norwich sometime around August 2013. I was captivated - Eimear's lovely soft Irish voice and perfect delivery, almost shy but with the confidence of knowing the text inside out, made me want her to read the whole thing. It was like poetry almost but not. I bought the book (did I get her to sign it? I can't remember!), a beautifully designed and presented edition in the 'uniform' of all of the Galley Beggar publications.
Reading it myself was not quite as mesmerising and compelling as hearing Eimear read it (I did try to get her to read the whole thing as a piece of theatre for the Norwich Fringe Festival) but I still loved it, and better still admired it.
So now, in the glow of the news that she has been rewarded again (she won the £10,000 Goldsmith's Prize for original fiction, was shortlisted for the new Folio Prize, was named the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and is nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists) I am very pleased for Eimear, dead chuffed for Norwich who is, after all, a City of Literature and did attract Eimear to live here, and above all proud to be in at the begining, in the same city as the people with the foresight, dedication and drive to realise what had arrived in our midst. Well done all - and go out and buy it! It's now published by Faber & Faber .
And this is also one book that UEA Creative Writing course can't take the credit for, as Eimear wrote the book in her home country of Ireland nine years ago.
It is an unusual book with a flow and syntax unlike any other. It is described as stream of consciousness writing but it starts with the unformed voice of an unborn child and continues to reflect thoughts and a thinking process that is disjointed and incomplete in the way that the language of our thinking is.
I heard Eimear read an extract at the very first launch in The Bookhive in Norwich sometime around August 2013. I was captivated - Eimear's lovely soft Irish voice and perfect delivery, almost shy but with the confidence of knowing the text inside out, made me want her to read the whole thing. It was like poetry almost but not. I bought the book (did I get her to sign it? I can't remember!), a beautifully designed and presented edition in the 'uniform' of all of the Galley Beggar publications.
Reading it myself was not quite as mesmerising and compelling as hearing Eimear read it (I did try to get her to read the whole thing as a piece of theatre for the Norwich Fringe Festival) but I still loved it, and better still admired it.
So now, in the glow of the news that she has been rewarded again (she won the £10,000 Goldsmith's Prize for original fiction, was shortlisted for the new Folio Prize, was named the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year and is nominated for the Desmond Elliott Prize for first-time novelists) I am very pleased for Eimear, dead chuffed for Norwich who is, after all, a City of Literature and did attract Eimear to live here, and above all proud to be in at the begining, in the same city as the people with the foresight, dedication and drive to realise what had arrived in our midst. Well done all - and go out and buy it! It's now published by Faber & Faber .
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