Eggshells
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Irish Book of the Year Finalist
An Amazon “Best Books of the Year So Far”
An Irish Times Book Club Selection
An eccentric young woman searches for friendship, understanding, and belonging as she roams Dublin in this “wildly funny” debut from an exciting voice in Irish literature (New York Times Book Review)
Vivian doesn't feel like she fits in—and never has. As a child, she was so whimsical that her parents told her she was “left by fairies.” Now, living alone in Dublin, she finds herself without a friend in the world.
So, she decides it’s time to change her life: She begins by advertising for a friend. Not just any friend. She wants one named Penelope.
Meanwhile, Vivian roams the city, mapping out a new neighborhood every day, seeking her escape route to a better world, the other world her parents told her she came from.
And then one day someone named Penelope answers her ad for a friend. And from that moment on, Vivian's life begins to change.
Debut author Caitriona Lally offers readers an exhilaratingly fresh take on the Irish love for lyricism, humor, and inventive wordplay in a book that is, in itself, deeply charming, and deeply moving.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this whimsical debut novel, Lally chronicles the wanderings of Vivian, a lonely woman who believes herself to be a fairy whose days are spent searching Dublin for the "thin places" that might return her home, "portals to another world." In between these outings she visits with her friend Penelope, whom she meets after posting an advertisement for someone of that name in hopes of figuring out "why she doesn't rhyme with antelope," and her straightlaced sister, who, as Vivian observes, "copes better with her own words than with mine." Words, in fact, are Vivian's primary concern. She makes lists of eccentric names to write in her "notebook of certainties" and muses about having the letter K abolished ("a good C' or a double CC' would do nicely"). As Vivian's inquiries about a door to Oz or Hades are met by strangers who blink in response like they have "just come out of the cinema into the sunlight," Lally's charmingly droll prose takes on a desperate edge. Having suffered a parade of predictable disappointments, Vivian is no closer to fitting in than she began, and her greatest fantasy is as commonplace as eliciting a laugh over drinks with friends. "They're bent double and drink is pouring out their noses," she imagines, "but that is just the start of my jokes, there are more."
