Eimear McBride was born in Liverpool in 1976 to Irish parents. The family moved back to Ireland when she was three. She spent her childhood in Sligo and Mayo. Then, at the age of 17, she moved to London.
Written during her time as the inaugural fellow in the Beckett archive last
year, Eimear McBride's three short, characteristically brilliant plays -
collected in one work, Mouthpieces. Each play depicts a fragment of female
experience, all of them told in in Eimear's vivid, original and sharp-witted
style.
The blistering non-fiction debut from the author of the critically acclaimed A Girl is a Half-formed Thing*As heard on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour*'A fearless, interrogative work ... A fierce and fascinating manifesto in McBride's persuasive prose' Sinéad GleesonHere, Eimear McBride unpicks the contradictory forces of disgust and objectification that control and shame women. From playground taunts of 'only sluts do it' but 'virgins are frigid', to ladette culture, and the arrival of 'ironic' porn, via Debbie Harry, the Kardashians and the Catholic church - she looks at how this prejudicial messaging has played out in the past, and still surrounds us today. In this subversive essay, McBride asks - are women still damned if we do, damned if we don't? How can we give our daughters (and sons) the unbounded futures we want for them? And, in this moment of global crisis, might our gift for juggling contradiction help us to find a way forward?'A satisfying feminist polemic' Susie Orbach'Remarkable' Scotsman'Eimear McBride is that old fashioned thing, a genius' Guardian
From Eimear McBride, author of the award-winning A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing, comes the beguiling travelogue of a woman in exile: from her past, her ghosts, and herself. A nameless woman enters a hotel room. She’s been here once before. In the years since, the room hasn’t changed, but she has. Forever caught between check-in and check-out, she will go on to occupy other hotel rooms. From Avignon to Oslo, Auckland to Austin, each is as anonymous as the last but bound by rules of her choosing. There, amid the detritus of her travels, the matchbooks, cigarettes, keys and room-service wine, she negotiates with her memories, with the men she sometimes meets, with the clichés invented to aggravate middle-aged women, with those she has lost or left behind--and with what it might mean to return home. Urgent and immersive, filled with black humour and desire, McBride’s Strange Hotel is a novel of enduring emotional force.
WINNER OF THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONWINNER OF THE DESMOND ELLIOTT
PRIZEKERRY GROUP IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARDWINNER OF THE GOLDSMITHS
PRIZEEimear McBride's award-winning debut novel tells the story of a young
woman's relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his
childhood brain tumour.