Review by Booklist Review
Award-winning Irish novelist McBride (The Lesser Bohemians, 2016) writes with soul-stirringly inventive language and an immediate, stream-of-consciousness style that's all her own. While in some ways more straightforward than her previous books, this slim novel casts a distinctive literary spell. Opening the book to a list of cities, readers first stop in Avignon, where an unnamed woman checks into a dingy hotel, with a plan. It involves drinking wine, readers understand, but not succumbing to a flirtation with her courtyard neighbor. The episode ends, and the next stop on the ticker-tape of cities is Prague, where, watching a rainstorm from an unsafe balcony, she hopes her previous night's encounter will exit her room. Incidents follow in Oslo, Auckland, and Austin, each separated by years. Readers catch glimpses of this woman's past and the future she's aging mostly gratefully into. As we begin to grasp why she, and thus we, are in these rooms, McBride interrupts the narrative with subject and tense changes that keep us, thrillingly, on our toes. This begs to be savored, and reread.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
McBride (A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing) delivers a globe-spanning travelogue set entirely in hotel rooms in this beguiling work. Lists of cities section off the narrative; in those flagged by an x, the protagonist, an unnamed itinerant woman, has experienced a tryst. Rather than chronologically plot these encounters, McBride presents them as a runaway train of the woman's solipsistic thought as to their significance, leaving her at odds to draw conclusions. After rebuffing one man's advances, she returns to her room and falls asleep watching loud TV porn. Sex with one man pushes her into suicidal contemplation; sex with another cheers her enough to consider joining him for breakfast the following morning (she doesn't). In the final scene, McBride switches from third- to first-person narration, at which point the narrator reflects on how her past choices have "absented" her from herself. The linguistic prowess found in McBride's other books remains present, with the bravado slightly dialed down for emotional effect. McBride's nebulous formalist structure could be described as a long prose poem masquerading as a novel. As a narrative, though, it is a half-formed thing. (May)
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Review by Library Journal Review
An anonymous middle-aged woman from someplace undisclosed travels the world to stay in hotels. Though cultured and possessing a rigorous intellect, this traveler does not seem interested in sightseeing. Instead, she spends much of her time in her rented room, meticulously observing and describing to herself the emotional, mental, and physical sensations she experiences. She also absorbs the details of each room, noting the locations of thermostats and light switches. Occasionally, she drinks in the hotel bar and meets a man, experiences that also undergo keen analysis. Despite the intellectual control she exerts during her hotel stays, memory inevitably intrudes upon her thoughts, calling into question the very nature of her travels. Is she running from something or someone? Is she on a quest? Answers remain elusive, though a moment of humiliating indiscretion may disrupt the traveler's intentionality in ways that might liberate her. VERDICT Thematically and stylistically, McBride's third novel boldly departs from previous work, especially her stunning debut, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing. McBride narrates this story of a mature woman in a considered, crafted voice that suggests language can be both subterfuge and cover. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]--John G. Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The third novel from the unique Irish author. After her dazzling debut, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing (2014)--winner of the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, among others--McBride took a slight step back in The Lesser Bohemians (though that book did win the 2016 James Tait Black Memorial Prize). In her latest, a slim book that could be considered a novella, the author yet again dives relentlessly into the interior of her unnamed protagonist, narrating her travels to anonymous hotels in Avignon, France, Prague, Oslo, Auckland, and Austin. In each locale, she drinks wine, smokes cigarettes, and engages in one-night stands and lengthy bouts of what she admits is "existential overindulgence," desperately seeking to avoid any further thoughts of an unnamed trauma that she suffered in the past (likely the loss of the father of her child, referenced only obliquely at moments throughout the book). The narrative is focused almost entirely inward, structured like a lengthy interior monologue or self-negotiation that often grows claustrophobic. Consistently, the protagonist reverts to her "preferred manner in which to proceed. Thinking her way carefully around every instant. Grammatically and logically constructing it….Lining words up against words, then clause against clause until an agreeable distance has been reached from the initial, unmanageable impulse which first set them all in train." It's clear that the woman has endured significant emotional and spiritual pain. However, in relating her thoughts, she may be "relentlessly reshuffling the deck of pseudo-intellectual garble which...serves the solitary purpose of keeping the world at the far end of a very long sentence." As in McBride's previous books, there are numerous sparks of singularly brilliant prose--e.g., "Outside the sky's a horror of fight and bruise. Velour black, pumped with racket, gored by orange." Ultimately, though, as the protagonist herself acknowledges, "the time for this digression is up. She should really be getting off this subject." Readers will agree at many points in her story. A bridge work that will hopefully lead to McBride's next major novel. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
