Joshua Cohen of the New York Times, hails Eimear McBride's A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing as "a future classic".
"It helps, then, that its plot is among the oldest: childhood, or innocence and its loss," writes Cohen.
First published in 2013, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2014, and the prestigious Goldsmiths Prize for fiction.
The latter win was followed by nominations for The Folio Prize and The Guardian First Book Prize. The Irish author wrote the novel in six months when she was aged 27. McBride was born in Liverpool in 1976 to Irish parents.
Cohen said: "Genesis is narrated in an omniscient third person: Eve picks the fruit and is shamed. McBride opts for a first-person heroine-narrator who drinks, takes drugs and enjoys — but is traumatized by — sex. She’s a lapsed Catholic, and always a cowed but dutiful daughter. She tells us all this — obliquely — and never says her name."
As a stage adaptation, A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing can be seen at The Samuel Beckett Theatre, Dublin as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival which runs from September 25 to October 12.
