Summary: Hello and welcome back to You Wrote The Book, a book based podcast hosted by Simon Savidge. Each fortnight over the coming months he will be joined by a special guest author to discuss their life as a writer and as a reader, from the current novel they have published to the first book they read and everything in between. Simon’s guest for this episode is Eimear McBride whose debut novel A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing took nine years to publish before it won the inaugural Goldsmith’s Prize earlier this year; which celebrates ‘fiction at its most novel’. This wonderfully describes Eimear’s debut, a tale of a young woman coming of age in Ireland whilst living with her mother and sick elder brother. A dark and often confronting tale it is written in one of the most unusual, and equally most beautiful, styles – one not for the faint hearted or fast and furious reader as it is one which takes work but the reward is fantastic. Simon started off by asking Eimear if she could read the opening of the book to give you all a taster A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing before we talked about the book in more detail and how Eimear got it to finally be publisher... Simon will be back in two weeks with Jennifer Saunders for a Christmas Special and welcoming in the new year with Christos Tsiolkas and Natalie Young coming in 2014. If you have any questions for them, would like to suggest authors you think I should be getting on the show, or simply want to have a natter about books, you can email youwrotethebook@gmail.com or find us on twitter @youwrotethebook. If you want to hear Simon talking more books do join him every other week with Thomas Otto on The Readers Podcast, you can also find him chatting and reviewing book on his blogSavidge Reads. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes where you can find previous episodes with Evie Wyld, Keith Ridgway, Niccolo Ammaniti, John Boyne, Hannah Kent, Taiye Selasi, Joanne Harris, Patrick Ness, Damian Barr, Maggie O’Farrell and many more.
