The City Changes Its Face by Eimear McBride

 

This novel is set in London in the mid-nineties.  Eily and Stephen have started a relationship and have just moved in together into a flat.  Eily is nineteen while Stephen is in his mid-forties.  He is a filmmaker while she is still in university hoping to become an actress.

When Stephen's daughter comes to visit there is a strain in his relationship with Eily.  Eily is only two years older than his daughter.  Stephen hasn't seen her in years as she has been living in Canada with his ex-wife.  Along with the strain of getting to know her again, she has also arrived as his autobiographical film is about finished and she and Eily now see all the horrors of his early life and the time he spent addicted to street drugs.  

Eighteen months later, the relationship is very tentative.  Eily has had something happen and hasn't left the flat in months.  There is a slow revealing of her secret and what it means to the two.  Can their relationship survive?

Eimear McBride is an Irish author whose work I typically love.  I wasn't as taken with this novel as with some of her other work but it still was interesting and I'm glad I read it.  It's hard to imagine a relationship with that kind of age gap that could possibly work and its interesting to view one from the inside.  Stephen is haunted by his past and one senses that part of the draw to Eily is that they are on the same emotional level in their growth as an adult.  The daughter remained a mystery to me, at times accepting of everything she finds in her father's life and at times still being the little girl who lost her father many years ago to divorce.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.