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Spectator
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Spare us from ‘experimental' novels
Some sorts of books and dramas have very strict rules. We like a lot of things to be absolutely predictable. In romantic comedies, a girl chooses between a charmer who turns out to be a rotter and another man she hates at first but then falls for. In the BBC's long-running Casualty, if a worried patient turns up with his put-upon wife who coughs twice, it's the wife who's got an undiagnosed fatal disease. Bertie Wooster falls for a girl that Jeeves doesn't care for and the valet goes to some lengths to detach his employer. We like these things because they're safe and a little bit cosy and we all know what the rules are. One of the most rigid genres at the moment is slightly different. Even though it's got a set of incredibly strict rules, it's regarded by its adherents, not as an exercise within conventional boundaries, like an episode of Midsomer Murders, but as a radical demonstration of rule-breaking. I'm talking about the experimental novel. After a while, the sceptical reader has to ask: if the same rule is being broken in exactly the same way, novel after novel, at what point does that turn into a new and very strict rule? Earlier this year, the Irish-British novelist Eimear McBride published a new novel, The City Changes Its Face. I single her out but, to be honest, there is no shortage of other exemplars. It was greeted with rapture by book reviewers. The Guardian observed with awe that 'she uses verbs as nouns, nouns as adjectives'. This magazine's reviewer wrote: 'To say that it is 'experimental' doesn't do justice to its flexibility and force.
Sydney Morning Herald
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
A night in becomes a poetic examination of marriage, trauma and power
FICTION The City Changes Its Face Eimear McBride Faber, $32.99 Eimear McBride's close, rushing, linguistically playful prose style has earned her comparisons with her Irish modernist forefather James Joyce. But where Joyce fixes his narrative attention on the tiny actions that make up daily life, McBride tends to reserve her microscopic insights for activities of more obvious emotional import: often, sex and argument. Her 2016 novel The Lesser Bohemians, in which the plot consists mainly of these two things, is an affecting account of the beginnings of a tortured relationship between a drama student and an actor twice her age, each of who are reckoning with the legacy of childhood abuse. Her follow-up, The City Changes its Face, finds the couple, Eily and Stephen, roughly two years later, having none of the sex and many of the arguments. The main thrust of the action is more minimal, its narrative world even smaller. It consists of one tense domestic scene in which Eily and Stephen sit in their living room in a conversational stalemate befitting a long-married couple. Eily has dropped out of drama school and rarely leaves the house. The relationship, we learn, was initially knocked off course by Stephen's long-lost daughter Grace coming to stay. Something Eily has done that they are unable to talk about – 'more than a get-over-it kind of thing', Stephen says – hangs over them, but it is only recounted to us in the final pages. McBride breaks up the long, airless night with Eily's recollections of the months leading up to it, which slowly brings us up to the recent traumatic episode. If flirting, which McBride rendered charmingly in the first novel, is about circling the unmentionable thing that might happen between two people, this book is about circling the unmentionable things that have. Since the event is unspeakable (even if fairly easy to guess), much of the narration remains burrowed deeply in Eily's mind. McBride is at her best in this place below language: the register of cognitive twitches, reflexive movements and unfollowed instincts. When Eily is wasted in the pub with Grace, 'the edges of sayable swung wildly to left and right'. When Stephen appears to be on the brink of asking Eily a difficult question, she 'veered to generalities about the day's dids and nots'. Then, in between the many unsaid words, there are wordless gestures. During a semi-playful argument over the dishes, Eily mildly notices 'this skitting about as his bare foot rocks me back and forth on the long-legged stool'. The night at home unfolds in a jagged present tense marked by McBride's typical experiments with syntax and space on the page. With each moment fractured into many fragments, she needles in where the characters' words, and even thoughts, refuse to go. When Stephen remarks that Grace will be able to do anything she wants after finishing school, Eily thinks to herself: 'Anything she wants. My soft envy of which bred a neglect I chose not to fix.' We are so absorbed in the micro-emotional landscape, it's easy to forget that Grace, this model of youth's easy freedom, is barely two years Eily's junior. Time is elasticated: the sting of the idea is forgotten as fast as it arrives.
The Age
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
A night in becomes a poetic examination of marriage, trauma and power
FICTION The City Changes Its Face Eimear McBride Faber, $32.99 Eimear McBride's close, rushing, linguistically playful prose style has earned her comparisons with her Irish modernist forefather James Joyce. But where Joyce fixes his narrative attention on the tiny actions that make up daily life, McBride tends to reserve her microscopic insights for activities of more obvious emotional import: often, sex and argument. Her 2016 novel The Lesser Bohemians, in which the plot consists mainly of these two things, is an affecting account of the beginnings of a tortured relationship between a drama student and an actor twice her age, each of who are reckoning with the legacy of childhood abuse. Her follow-up, The City Changes its Face, finds the couple, Eily and Stephen, roughly two years later, having none of the sex and many of the arguments. The main thrust of the action is more minimal, its narrative world even smaller. It consists of one tense domestic scene in which Eily and Stephen sit in their living room in a conversational stalemate befitting a long-married couple. Eily has dropped out of drama school and rarely leaves the house. The relationship, we learn, was initially knocked off course by Stephen's long-lost daughter Grace coming to stay. Something Eily has done that they are unable to talk about – 'more than a get-over-it kind of thing', Stephen says – hangs over them, but it is only recounted to us in the final pages. McBride breaks up the long, airless night with Eily's recollections of the months leading up to it, which slowly brings us up to the recent traumatic episode. If flirting, which McBride rendered charmingly in the first novel, is about circling the unmentionable thing that might happen between two people, this book is about circling the unmentionable things that have. Since the event is unspeakable (even if fairly easy to guess), much of the narration remains burrowed deeply in Eily's mind. McBride is at her best in this place below language: the register of cognitive twitches, reflexive movements and unfollowed instincts. When Eily is wasted in the pub with Grace, 'the edges of sayable swung wildly to left and right'. When Stephen appears to be on the brink of asking Eily a difficult question, she 'veered to generalities about the day's dids and nots'. Then, in between the many unsaid words, there are wordless gestures. During a semi-playful argument over the dishes, Eily mildly notices 'this skitting about as his bare foot rocks me back and forth on the long-legged stool'. The night at home unfolds in a jagged present tense marked by McBride's typical experiments with syntax and space on the page. With each moment fractured into many fragments, she needles in where the characters' words, and even thoughts, refuse to go. When Stephen remarks that Grace will be able to do anything she wants after finishing school, Eily thinks to herself: 'Anything she wants. My soft envy of which bred a neglect I chose not to fix.' We are so absorbed in the micro-emotional landscape, it's easy to forget that Grace, this model of youth's easy freedom, is barely two years Eily's junior. Time is elasticated: the sting of the idea is forgotten as fast as it arrives.
