After achieving huge success with her first novel, Norwich-based author Eimear McBride is back with a brand new book.
The Lesser Bohemians is the new title from the author whose multi award-winning first book – A Girl is A Half-formed Thing – went from being nine years left on the shelf to being the hottest text on the literary scene.
Ahead of yesterday's official launch at independent Norwich book shop the Book Hive, the 39-year-old said she was really excited about the next chapter in her career as an author.
About her new book, she said: 'It's a love story. It's about a relationship between an 18-year-old drama student who has recently arrived in London from Ireland and a 38-year-old actor. It's set in London in the mid-90s, in north London, so it's also very much a love letter to that time and that place.'
Ms McBride, who is married to Norfolk and Norwich Festival artistic director William Galinsky, with whom she has a young daughter, said she began writing the book in 2007 when she was back living in Ireland, the country where she grew up, while missing life as a student in the UK's capital city.
'I missed London a lot and I started to think about the London that I had known when I arrived as a 17-year-old at drama school, and feeling quite homesick for it, I suppose – and maybe also for that time in my life, and so I started to write about London.'
Her first book famously took readers into the mind of an Irish girl from before she was born until the age of 20 and was written in a unique way described as being 'not so much a stream of consciousness as an unconsious railing against a life that makes little sense'.
When asked how she thought her second book compared, Ms McBride said: 'It's a better book than A Girl is a Half-formed Thing but the two books are also quite connected. Linguistically they certainly start at the same point, although The Lesser Bohemians changes as it goes on and the girl begins to make connections in the world and language begins to connect up. They share some thematic concerns, but whereas Girl is a book about the moment of trauma, capturing that exact moment of trauma, The Lesser Bohemians is about the life after – in the long-term and the short-term.'
Ms McBride, who has already started writing her third book, said she was looking forward to finding out what readers think of The Lesser Bohemians.
'I don't think anybody is surprised by me now, the way they were by A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, so people will be coming with a different attitude towards my work, with some understanding of it already in place and certain expectations and prejudices about what they hope to find there. I hope that they will go with me on this different journey.'
The Lesser Bohemians is published by Faber and Faber and is out now.
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