lou's library

I won’t lie, I was starting to worry 2026 might be the year I won’t find a new favourite book. I have read lots of good books that were in solid four star territory, but the only five stars I had given were to rereads of old favourites. A few books I had high expectations for fell slightly short for me, and so as the year progressed and we made our way into the second half of 2026, I became ever more impatient for my first five star new read of the year. So it is with immense pleasure that I can announce today that the wait has finally ended and I have found a new favourite book! I’d almost forgotten how incredibly fun it is to become so obsessed with a book it’s all you can think about, and to find absolutely no flaw with it.

I don’t remember who recommended The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride to me. None of my friends seem to ever have heard of the book or the author, so I suspect I saw it online somewhere and noted it down on my TBR list. Then I found it second hand online for next to nothing, so I bought it even though I didn’t remember what it was about. It lived on my shelf for a few months, until I finally picked it up last week, skimming over the synopsis on the back to get a feel for what I was going into, and then simply started to read.

My very first thought was: Oh, I don’t know if this is for me. That was somewhere between the third and fourth sentence. Not a good sign. Those doubts were caused by the writing style, which I would describe as somewhere between fragmented and stream of consciousness. There are no quotation marks and at times it is really difficult to ascertain who is saying what. At first, all of this threw me off, to the point where I almost considered quitting the book before I had properly begun reading it. I’m so glad I didn’t.

Once I had oriented myself in the storyline a little bit and gotten used to the unusual writing style, I found myself completely engrossed in this story of a young Irish drama student moving to London and a much older English actor who hopelessly fall in love with each other. The fragmented writing style of The Lesser Bohemians means that we don’t get to know characters in the usual way, it’s much more a slow piecing together of little details and I found that to be incredibly intriguing and rewarding. We don’t even learn the main characters’ names until the latter part of the book.

If all of this sounds off-putting to you, please do not let this stop you from giving this book a try. It honestly wouldn’t have sounded up my street either, but I ended up loving this book so much I couldn’t stop talking about it for days afterwards (a frustrating experience when you’re the only person you know who has read the book). The writing, once you have gotten used to it, is simply stunning in its beauty and captures the feeling of coming of age beautifully. The plot is messy in the way life often is, and deals with heavy subject matter, so I would strongly encourage you to check the trigger warnings beforehand.

Above all, Eimear McBride managed to make me care for these deeply flawed characters, and I gladly would have read 300 more pages about them. I was sad to let them go, and already know this is not the last time I will read The Lesser Bohemians. It is the kind of book that benefits from rereading, because once you know what will happen, you understand the entire story so much better.

One of the things I loved the most about the book was its London setting. Thousands of books are set in this city, but while it often functions as a vague backdrop signalling big city life, The Lesser Bohemians couldn’t have been set anywhere else. London comes to life in these pages and often feels like a character in itself. Particularly Camden and North London more generally feature a lot in these pages, and if you’re familiar with the city then you will likely find great joy in revisiting these sites with the characters in the book.

There is so much humanity in this story, simple as it is in many ways, and so many insights into what it means to be young and alive and simply trying your best. To me, this was a simultaneously comforting and devastating read, and I know I will keep thinking about it for a long time. I now absolutely have to read the author’s other books, so please let me know if you’re familiar with her work so I know which one to read next! Happy reading!