A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing

I’ve never read anything remotely like this book.

It’s a painfully difficult but beautifully poetic read about an Irish girl from a miserably dysfunctional family with a difficult, abusive, ranting mother and a disabled older brother. After she is sexually abused by her uncle, the girl allows herself to be used by the boys at school and begins a series of loveless encounters, as if determined to prove how worthless she is. At college, she continues her career of joyless, destructive promiscuity.

The book is steeped in guilt and shame, redeemed only by the depictions of pure love she has… show more.