Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride

Eimear McBride is the author of four novels: A Girl is a Half-formed ThingThe Lesser BohemiansStrange Hotel, and The City Changes Its Face. She is the recipient of the Women's Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

cover of the book Lili Is Crying

Lili Is Crying

by Hélène Bessette

Translated by Kate Briggs

With a contribution by Eimear McBride

Lili Is Crying, Hélène Bessette’s debut novel, conveys with singular force the fraughtness and depth of the troubling relationship between Lili and her mother, Charlotte. With a near-mythic quality, Bessette's stripped-back prose evokes at once the pain of thwarted love—of desire run cold—and the promise of renewal. Lauded by critics on its initial 1953 publication for its boundary-pushing style, Lili Is Crying catapulted Bessette to cult status in France. The novel is moving and maddening in turns, with its characters trapped in their own cruelties and sorrows, but in its spareness and strength it feels true. "Show me a woman who's chosen something." Bessette's books were hailed for their unusual economy of expression, rarity, strange humor, and sheer vivacity. She characterized her new kind of novel as "a freshly cut slice of life, whose force comes from its lack of commentary."

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