She has no interest whatsoever in France.

This episode focuses on the first half of Eimear McBride's excellent novel Strange Hotel, diving into its unique narrative structure, narrational techniques (including our old friend the present tense), immersive language, and use of memory. The discussion explores the novel’s Modernist inheritances and approach, including different levels of third-person narration and the use of scenic immediacy juxtaposed with accessed interiority.

We can see similar methods in writers from James Joyce to Rachel Cusk, and Strange Hotel is definitely one of those novels that shows the utility of the term “literary ancestry.” We take a close look at McBride’s skills in atmospheric prose, and leave everyone on a cliffhanger with plans made for a two-part episode (!) to further explore the novel's composition and readerly orientation—and whether this style is an example of stream-of-consciousness.

Stay tuned for the Substack post with complete show notes in a few days, and in the meantime—stay critical.

Merci !

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