MCBRIDE'S LANGAUAGE IS RED-HOT, THE HIGH VOLTAGE OF BOTH PERCEPTION AND RESPONSE

ence, set the bar. It takes a poet's instinct to capture a fleeting scene in its entirety: action, reaction, emotional landscape, memories evoked, fears aroused, aesthetic quality, all of it. Everyday language is not up to the task.

The limitations of language probably account for most of the unintentionally comic sex scenes in literature. Conversely, the compression, concision, and reach of McBride's language account for the utter authenticity of all the diverse conjoining that goes on between the lovers in The Lesser Bohemians. The detailed and protracted rendition of the narrator's longed-for loss of virginity is honest, true and raw. Entirely without cliché or coyness, it avoids both the vulgar and the comic. The interior monologue focuses on the emotional vulnerability and turbulence that accompanies the act, rather than on the anatomy. More impressive, the many beddings that quickly ensue are rendered in similar detail, engaging us only more deeply as we witness, and seem to collaborate in, the time-lapse evolution of a relationship, from one night stand to love.

All the more strange, then, that halfway through the book McBride chooses to lay down her tools and pick up a different set, a conventional hammer and nails to laboriously construct a back story for the lover and then – worse – have him recount it to the narrator blow by blow, in logical sequence (which almost never happens when we talk to those closest to us). It feels contrived. The lover's voice feels inauthentic, and the sensational secrets he reveals remain, to me at least, unconvincing. To be fair, I could see what McBride was aiming for, but the outcome is unhappy. No-one wants to watch the writer at work.

Thankfully this long second half is relieved by some passages that return the passion and the power of the first. But in abandoning her narrator's interior monologue McBride sabotaged her book's potential, diffusing the impact of Eily's story and weakening its overall drive. A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing derived its force from its integrity – perfect union of form and content, single vision, drive and focus – while The Lesser Bohemians interrupts itself. I wanted to turn back the clock and have McBride heed Russell Hoban's much quoted observation: “A story is what remains when you leave out most of the action.” The real story of The Lesser Bohemians is the disparity in age and experience between the lovers. That they are both previously damaged adds to the precariousness of their situation, but we really don't need to know the details. Just watching what happens between these two and how they negotiate the uneven ground is riveting. And it's McBride's prodigious talent that keeps attention pinned to the page.