The City Changes Its Face

Publishes 29th April 2025. Pre-order now through orders@lanebook.com.au or (08) 9348 4423. 

Susan Midalia's Review

One of the most encouraging stories I’ve heard about the need for persistence in the publishing industry concerns Irish writer Eimear McBride’s debut novel A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. It took nine years for the book to find a publisher, but having finally done so, it garnered laudatory reviews and won numerous prestigious prizes. Acclaimed writer Anne Enright called A Girl is a Half-formed Thing “a work of genius”; it’s certainly one of the most bracingly memorable books I’ve ever read.

McBride’s recently released novel The City Changes its Face is a sequel of sorts to her second novel The Lesser Bohemians, although you don’t need to have read the latter to admire this new work of genius (and like Enright, I rarely use the word genius when reviewing books). The Lesser Bohemians centres on the passionate relationship between an aspiring actress, eighteen-year-old Eily, and an established actor Stephen, twenty years her senior, a promiscuous womaniser who tells her that he’s never been in love. McBride’s new novel takes up the relationship two years later, when the latent tensions between the couple have become increasingly disturbing.

Alternating between the Dublin of the present and the London past, The City Changes its Face is a highly challenging read in terms of both content and form. In terms of the story, Eily and Stephen’s relationship becomes deeply troubled with the arrival of Stephen’s eighteen-year-old daughter Grace; it brings to the surface what’s typically called “a dark secret” from the past. It’s a cliché which fails to do justice to the emotional and psychological devastation that ensues. The novel’s prose style is similarly confronting: as brilliantly described by novelist Meg Nolan, McBride’s sentences “judder and disintegrate and run over each other.” Here, for example, is Eily’s resentment of Stephen’s repeated rejections of sex: “Night night bitch battle body fold and ache. Bloody spurned to the wall by your blanched shoulder blade. Bloody looking at the state of the wallpaper on it. Bloody f**k. Bloody what anyway.” But like the linguistic virtuosity of James Joyce, this is not mere stylistic exhibitionism; instead, such writing re-creates the feelings and sensations of Eily’s thoughts and feelings instead of merely describing them. It demonstrates the vital and vivid difference between reading about an experience and the reader, like Eily, living it in her body and heart, as well as in her mind.

The final third of the novel offers a radical change of mode, in which, for the first time, Stephen shows an autobiographical film to his lover and daughter. The narrative device of a script is used to the same effect in another recent novel, Caoilinn Hughes’ wonderful The Alternatives. In both cases, keeping traumatic experiences at an emotional remove avoids the melodrama and sensationalism into which less intelligent works inevitably descend when dealing with psychologically turbulent subject-matter.  

The City Changes its Face probably won’t appeal to readers of conventionally written and comforting narratives. But if, like me, you appreciate writing that’s both searingly honest and stylistically inventive, McBride’s new book is a must-read. It’s also made for reading aloud, to hear how the sounds of words and the rhythms of sentences evoke the pleasures and anguish of intimate sexual and familial relationships. McBride’s skilful use of the aural dimension of language reminds us that words are not only their dictionary definitions but also a way of creating powerful emotions in readers.

Publisher's Review 

An intense story of passion, jealousy and family from the trailblazing, award-winning Eimear McBride.

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.