The City Changes Its Face (2025)
Why this one?
I pre-ordered this one having loved McBride’s debut on my Women’s Prize readthrough. Being a completist, I had to read The Lesser Bohemians first, though, but finally I got around to reading the new one!
Eimear McBride (1976- ; active 2013- ), was born in Liverpool, England to Irish parents. She moved with them back to Ireland at the age of three, spending time in Tubercurry, Sligo and Mayo. She began writing as a young child, and moved to London aged 17 to attend The Drama Centre, but decided after graduating that she had no interest in becoming an actress.
It took her nine years to find a publisher for A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, her first novel, and she had already completed much of her second during this long search for a publisher. She had also moved to Norwich, England, where her husband Wiliam Galinsky was running an arts festival. A chance conversation between Galinsky and Henry Layte, owner of the Book Hive bookshop in Norwich, finally led to A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing being published, as the second release on Layte’s newly formed small independent press, Galley Beggar.
The book was a massive critical success, first taking the inaugural Goldsmiths Prize for fiction that “breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form” (beating fellow shortlisted books by the likes of Ali Smith and David Peace), before taking the 2014 Women’s Prize and receiving a wealth of other awards and nominations.
Her second novel, The Lesser Bohemians (2016) was published by Faber and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize as well seeing her shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize again, and longlisted for the 2017 Women’s Prize (won by a hugely inferior book, in my humble opinion). Her third novel, Strange Hotel, was published in 2020. The City Changes Its Face, a sequel to The Lesser Bohemians, was published early in 2025.
Thoughts, etc.
The City Changes Its Face is both a sequel to and a kind of retelling of McBride’s brilliant 2017 work The Lesser Bohemians. It joins that book’s protagonists, Eily and Stephen, just a few years after its events, with the setting roughly the same - we’re still in grimy mid-90s London, although the lovers’ new house is somewhat less poky and grim than their Camden dwelling in the first book. It hops around in time between the ‘present day’ setting of late 1996, and various periods in between the action of The Lesser Bohemians and that time. The broad concept is that the ‘now’ sections detail an argument between the two over the course of a day, with the hops back in time providing some context. In the middle of all of this is the book’s centrepiece, a description by Eily of a screening of a rough cut of Stephen’s autobiographical film, which expands on his traumatic backstory, this time artistically mediated and then interpreted by Eily, rather than in his first-person confessional voice as in the first book.
My first concern in coming to this book was whether it could either improve on or add to the near-perfection of the original novel featuring the same characters. In a sense, it tries to swerve that responsibility by presenting itself as a totally new work. At least in theory, it’s a self-contained story which doesn’t require knowledge of its ‘parent’ book. And yet (especially in my case, having only just read the first book) it’s hard not to compare and contrast, and in many ways the dialogue between the two works feels essential to its purpose. On an overall level, though, I don’t feel that it reaches the same heights as The Lesser Bohemians, and it does fall into the trap of feeling a bit too much like a ‘what happened next’ coda rather than a unified and balanced new work.
Stylistically, it’s reassuringly familiar. While 2025 McBride has a few new tricks to deploy, for the most part we get the same inner monologue from Eily that charmed and wowed us previously. It’s never not a joy to read her prose, but there is slightly less verve and momentum to Eily’s voice this time around. I think that’s deliberate: not only has the Eily of this book taken on board the harrowing details of her lover’s past life as expounded in the later part of Bohemians, but there are other factors at play that mean that the mood is inevitably lacking in the naive exuberance and sheer chaos of her first appearance. The first is something that felt inevitable: a crashing down to reality following the joy expressed at the end of the first book. Eily, still not 20, is prematurely entering a very grown up (read: somewhat dull) domestic relationship (substituting exciting late night visits to Stephen’s single bed for shared kitchen duties and nights alone in front of the telly while Stephen travels for work); Stephen’s daughter is on the scene and after the initial burst of support for their reunion Eily is contemplating the weirdness of their similarity in age; and behind the scenes there’s something deeper and more disturbing going on that we’ll only find out about later. All of these factors make sense of the slightly less vibrant tone of Eily’s voice here, but it still generally makes for a less thrilling ride than the former novel as a result.
That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of sublime writing to savour in here, though. The film section is written in an entirely different register to the rest of the book, and is stunningly realised. It’s both a celebration of the unique powers of film to express what can’t be expressed in prose, and in some senses the total opposite - Eily’s layers of interpretation and description of her reaction to what she’s seeing feel like they’re showcasing the powers of the written word just as effectively. It’s a beautiful section and one that swept me up and I powered through in no time. It’s very much this book’s version of Stephen’s telling of his backstory in the first book. The writing here is, if anything more powerful, but the impact (I think both for those familiar with Stephen’s story and perhaps newcomers) is somewhat lesser. It covers much of Stephen’s life in one sweep, which is heady and intoxicating but lacks the focus and impact of the raw and brutal revelations about his childhood and his mother in the first book. Those are of course revisted here, but more time is expended on his drug and sex addictions into his twenties and onwards. This is done in suitably dark fashion, but I didn’t feel like any of the new revelations here had the weight and gut-punching impact of those told in Bohemians.
This book’s sucker punch is, perhaps unsurprisingly, again saved for the final section, and I won’t reveal too much here. Safe to say that this time the revelations (as hinted throughout the book) come from Eily and are more recently experienced. What has happened is not entirely unpredictable by the time it arrives, but it is no less shocking and devastating as a result.
Despite its many positives, I thought that The City worked more as a ‘nice to have’ chapter in the lives of a couple of highly engaging protagonists than it did as a truly exceptional standalone work. The Lesser Bohemians felt perfectly structured and balanced, with a conclusion that felt like an appropriate place to end. Here, we have more of a vignette (albeit an incredibly rich and detailed one) in which we learn more about both characters and get the joy of spending more time with them, but many threads are left unresolved and there’s not the same feeling of unified purpose and completion. It’s an enjoyable visit back into this world, though, and a journey I’d happily continue - as I’m sure would McBride’s many fans.
Score
8.5
Still top quality stuff, but (perhaps inevitably) never reaching the same heights as its predecessor.
Next up
Belatedly getting around to reading some 2025 Women’s Prize longlisters, starting with The Ministry of Time, which sounds rather fun.
