Eimear McBride's debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman's relationship with her brother and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. It is an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist. To read A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator's head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn't always comfortable - but it is always a revelation. A book not soon forgotten.