About
Eimear McBride, award-winning author and one of the most important voices in contemporary fiction, will visit Seamus Heaney HomePlace on Thursday 29th May for a special event celebrating the release of her highly anticipated new novel, The City Changes Its Face.
McBride, renowned for her bold and innovative storytelling, has captivated readers with works such as A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, The Lesser Bohemians, and Strange Hotel.
She held the inaugural Creative Fellowship at the Beckett Research Centre, University of Reading and is the recipient of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Goldsmiths Prize, Kerry Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Her latest novel, The City Changes Its Face, is a deeply immersive tale of passion, jealousy, and family, set against the backdrop of 1990s London.
McBride was born in Liverpool to Northern Irish parents in 1976, one of four children and the only girl. In 1979 the family moved to Tubbercurry, County Sligo, in the Republic of Ireland. Her father died when she was 8 and in 1991 her mother moved the family to Castlebar, County Mayo. At the age of 17 she left Ireland for London.
Eimear McBride will be in conversation with Paula Shields.
[This is] McBride at the pinnacle of her craft ... McBride is at her most virtuosic in this novel when excavating forbidden emotional depths too dark to be confronted outside the pages of fiction. With its vividly realised characters, lurid plot and lyrically compacted prose, The City Changes Its Face is a typical McBride work. Praise doesn't come much higher. ― Financial Times
About the book:
A MUST-READ NOVEL OF 2025 IN THE GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES, IRISH TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, STYLIST, AND MANY OTHERS
'One of the finest writers at work today.' ANNE ENRIGHT
'McBride is a cartographer of the secret self, guiding us towards hidden treasure.' CLAIRE KILROY
'Eimear McBride does extraordinary things with language . . . she breaks every rule in the grammar book and gleefully gets away with it.' GUARDIAN
'A typical McBride work. Praise doesn’t come much higher.' FINANCIAL TIMES
So, all would be grand then, as far as the eye could see. Which it was, for a while. Up until the city, remembering its knives and forks, invited itself in to dine.
It’s 1995. Outside their grimy window, the city rushes by. But in the flat there is only Stephen and Eily. Their bodies, the tangled sheets. Unpacked boxes stacked in the kitchen and the total obsession of new love.
Eighteen months later, the flat feels different. Love is merging with reality. Stephen’s teenage daughter has re-appeared, while Eily has made a choice, the consequences of which she cannot outrun. Now they face a reckoning for all that's been left unspoken - emotions, secrets and ambitions. Tonight, if they are to find one another again, what must be said aloud?
Love rallies against life. Time tells truths. The city changes its face.
