Eggshells

Written by Caitriona Lally

Narrated by Olivia Caffrey

WINNER OF THE ROONEY PRIZE 2018

A modern Irish literary gem for anyone who has felt like the odd one out.

‘Inventive, funny and, ultimately, moving’ GUARDIAN

‘Wildly funny’ THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

‘Beguiling’ THE IRISH TIMES

‘Delightfully quirky’ THE IRISH INDEPENDENT

Vivian is an oddball.
An unemployed orphan living in the house of her recently deceased great aunt in North Dublin, Vivian boldly goes through life doing things in her own peculiar way, whether that be eating blue food, cultivating ‘her smell’, wishing people happy Christmas in April, or putting an ad up for a friend called Penelope to check why it doesn’t rhyme with antelope. But behind her heroic charm and undeniable logic, something isn’t right. With each attempt to connect with a stranger or her estranged sister doomed to misunderstanding, someone should ask: is Vivian OK?

A poignant and delightful story of belonging that plays with the myth of the Changeling and takes us by the hand through Dublin. A poetic call for us all to accept each other and find the Vivian within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780008324421

Reviews for Eggshells

[brokenteepee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a truly unique book. It is really like nothing I have ever read before. I am still not sure whether I liked it or hated it. It confused me, entranced me, angered me, almost brought me to tears and literally made me gasp at one point. It makes no sense. I almost stopped reading it but I couldn’t put it down. I think I need to read it again.It is a conundrum.Ms. Lally has created a character in Vivian (the main Vivian, not her sister Vivian) that stays with you for days after you finish reading the book. It is Vivian’s book – there is little about much else than her quirks and her desire to find a way to the otherworld for she has been told all her life she’s a changeling and she feels she will only be at home when she can find her own people.Vivian advertises for a friend – but she only wants a friend named Penelope – and through some miracle she gets a response and someone almost as add as she answers and they form a sort of friendship but since both of them are so wrapped up in their own worlds they can’t really see what is going on in the other’s life. Yet they are good for each other.I cannot explain this book for it follows no real plot. I can tell you that I read some of the most amazing turns of phrase I have ever read. So beautifully worded I stopped my reading to go back and read them again. And again. I truly stepped out of my box for this one and I am glad that I did. I am not completely sure I grasped this book. I do think it took place somewhere over my head but it was a true reading experience.

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Irish fiction (character novel in which quirky, lonely Vivian wanders the streets of Dublin looking for a portal to an alternate universe where she might belong). This was refreshing and funny, but I got tired of reading about her wandering journeys after the first 10 chapters or so (she has funny adventures, but rarely makes any progress). Maybe it could have just 9 chapters of her wandering the streets instead of 18? I eventually lost patience and skipped ahead (*spoiler alert*) to find that she does at least find a loyal kind of friend in "Penelope."

[citizenjoyce · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I just finished Eggshells by Caitriona Lally which won the Rooney Prize for "an outstanding body of work by an emerging Irish writer under forty years of age" in 2018. I have to say, when I first started reading this book I wondered what kind of idiot would award it a prize of any sort. If you like lists of anything you can think of, this is the book for you. This is a stream of consciousness novel about Vivian who considers herself a changling and spends her days trying to find a portal to send her back to where she belongs. I think she's autistic and she is alone in a home left her by her aunt. I think she lives "on the dole" because she does have a social service worker who keeps urging her to look for jobs. By alone, I mean this woman is able to live her life exactly as she wants, but she has no one to help her figure out how that should be. However, this is better than it could be - once she had parents who put her in a fire, changling that she is, to send her to her own country and get their real daughter back. So far, alone is better than that. She does have a sister, also named Vivian, who finds her quite distasteful. She also finds herself distasteful, evidently, because she will not look in a mirror; however, her very strong body odor is comforting to her. She will very occasionally bathe or wash her hair, but she prefers the way she smells without doing so. She writes up an ad for a friend and puts it on a tree, voila, she gets one as smelly and disoriented as she. She likes having a friend, within limits. She needs lots of alone time. Her behaviors in a 6-year-old would seem cute and precocious, but she's a gray-haired woman. It's a pretty short book, worth reading just for the novelty.

[flydodofly · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The marketing for the book worked, so I bought it, but while reading did not really get what it was about. There were some fun moments and clever ways of formulate thoughts, interestinf thoughts, too. But on the overall - it somehow did not really deliver on expectations.

[rretzler_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Eggshells was an Irish Book of the Year Finalist originally published in 2014. It was also an Amazon Best Books of the Year so Far (but I'm not sure what year.) The aunt that Vivian lives with in Dublin, Ireland has passed away and been cremated, and Vivian brings her ashes home. She addresses envelopes to people in her aunt's address book and also in the telephone directory and inserts some of her aunt's ashes in each envelope which she then mails. Vivian is twenty something and believes that she belongs to the fairies because she doesn't fit in with normal society. Her neighbors think she's strange, and her sister (who is also named Vivian) treats her badly. Vivian spends her days wandering around Dublin trying to find portals to return her to the fairy world that she believes she comes from. She puts a flyer on a sign-post advertising for a friend called Penelope because she wants to know why Penelope does not rhyme with antelope. She finally meets Penelope (who isn't really named Penelope) and they seem to get along because they both have poor personal hygiene in common.The interesting thing about this book is that I learned quite a bit about Dublin, Ireland and its architecture and various myths. What I did not like about the story is that Vivian is obviously a disturbed young woman of whom no one seems to want to take care. It is revealed in the book that her parents told her that she belonged with the fairies because she didn't fit in and that her father may also have been ill because he tried some horrible things to try to send her back to the fairies. Her sister doesn't want to be bothered with her, and the neighbors think she should just find someone and get married. However, the issue to me seems to be that Vivian has some serious issues and almost certainly mental illness, and no one seems to care - they just don't want to deal with her. Vivian herself seems happy, although lonely, as she doesn't understand how to interact with people, nor how to get along in society. If you could get past the sad fact that there is a young woman with a mental illness who no one seems to care about, then the book itself would be charming. Every day, Vivian goes out into the world and tries a different way to get back to the fairies. There are a lot of days in this 288-page book. There was no clear plot - the book didn't go anywhere, although Vivian herself certainly did. I read this over a two-day period, but honestly, it seemed like a lot longer...I just wanted some sort of closure, and there was none.

[askelmore · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Best for: People who like a whole lot of randomness in their novels.

In a nutshell: Woman who was likely abused when a child believes she’s a fairy and travels Dublin searching for her real home.

Line that sticks with me: “A politician is calling on another politician to do something. I would like to call on someone to do something but I don’t know if anyone would listen.”

Why I chose it: On independent bookstore day in Seattle, I visited 19 bookstores. Many were giving away mystery books wrapped in brown paper. These were galleys they’d received to determine if they’d carry a book. This is one of three I picked up throughout the day.

Review: The reviews on the back of this book trouble me a bit, as I feel like they are treating the main character, Vivian, as though she is simply quirky, when in truth she appears to instead be experiencing some form of mental illness that could likely benefit from some assistance. So much of her time is taken up searching for entrances to the fairy world to which she belongs. She was also likely abused by her now-deceased parents and treated very poorly by her living sister, but this isn’t explored deeply as Vivian is our narrator.

Author Caitriona Lally is talented with her prose and invokes very specific images - and smells - in the reader. As someone who has visited Dublin a fair number of times I did enjoy the recognition I felt in many of the places Vivian visited. There were certain aspects of Vivian’s personality and thinking that I could relate to, and all of it I could to some degree understand; I just don’t think the book as a whole worked well for me.

I almost gave this book three stars, but I think it needed either much more or much less; it didn’t work for me as an average-length work of fiction.

[jnwelch_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I got a big kick out of Eggshells by Caitriona Lally, first published in Ireland. Vivian doesn't experience the world the way we do, and she spends a good bit of time exploring Dublin for portals that will permit her to return to the "other world" in which she must belong. Most of us learn to be somewhat smooth socially, talking about the weather and making small talk and so on. Not Vivian. For her, a simple conversation with a retail clerk that ends well is a triumph. She bravely explores the city and seeks out interaction with Dubliners, even though she knows often they will pity and reject her. She's the one we avoid sitting with on the bus, and she's the one whose normal and boring sister advises to "shower more often" (she doesn't, because she likes her own smell).She's also one who experiences our world keenly, perhaps more keenly than we do. She loves words, and makes lists you almost want to sample like a menu, e.g., from displays in a museum, "Posset Bowl, Mether, Pitcher, Tankard, Water Bottle, Sweetmeat Box, Chalice, Salt Cellar . . ." Lally has done a virtuoso job of imagining Vivian's internal world, while positioning readers as the "normal" world trying to understand her.I move on to the next sign: "Where a dog fouls a public place, the person in charge of the dog must remove the faeces immediately." I like the certainty of those words, there is no dithering behind vague words for the sake of politeness. I take out my notebook and write out the words from the sign. A herd of tourists gathers around me. One of them reads aloud the sign in accented English, stops reading, and looks at me and my notebook. The tourists' feet waiver, and they drift away from my sign to find the plaques of famous writers along the park's edges. I return to the buried well."Her great-aunt left her a house filled with chairs, and she can take care of herself, although in eccentric ways (when a new week arrives, for example, she turns her clothes inside out). She is always well-intentioned, and generous, but not a patsy. When she decides she wants a friend, and that the friend needs to be named Penelope, she puts up a flyer, and it works. Her new acquaintance is an eccentric artist who is spiritually inclined, another outsider, and they develop an unusual friendship.I was so impressed by Lally's convincing portrayal of Vivian's different views of what we accept without thinking, and of Vivian's recognition of her effect on what J.K. Rowling might call muggles. Vivian's integrity is so complete that she will live in this world just as she is, even while knowing she must more naturally belong in some other. And that in turn makes us rethink what we unquestionably accept every day. In some ways it's a sort of light-hearted "A Provincial Kook in Dublin", (cf. Diary of a Provincial Lady and A Provincial Lady in London) and in some ways it's about as deep and moving as a book can get.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes I look at my daily life and think I live a very mundane existence. And that's why I read, to have experiences I'd never have, to be people I'll never be, to live lives far different from mine. Most of the time this works and I can slip into the skin of the characters or into the place or defining situation or a novel. But sometimes, just sometimes, I cannot make the leap. I cannot find a way into a character. Perhaps my very mundanity betrays me. And that leads to a very frustrating reading experience. Unfortunately, Caitriona Lally's Eggshells was one of those experiences for me.Vivian lives alone in the house she's inherited from her great aunt. She collects chairs, glares at the urn containing her great aunt's ashes, and frequently sniffs things to see if they've acquired her "meaty" scent yet (she's not big on hygiene). Her sister, also named Vivian, doesn't have much to do with her, clearly wanting to protect her children from their off-kilter aunt. Our main character Vivian actively avoids the neighbors but posts flyers on trees advertising for a friend named Penelope (the balance between consonants and vowels in the name is just right), cultivates a jungle of a front garden to encourage mice to move in, and walks all over Dublin looking for the portal she's convinced will send her back to fairy land, believing that she's a changeling. So you might say that she's a bit of an odd duck, an eccentric. Or you might wonder if she's so neuro-atypical that there is something more going on with her. She's an odd mix of amazingly insightful and strangely ignorant. There are textual hints that Vivian has been damaged in some way, especially by her father, but there's only a whisper of that, and only two or three brief times at that.Vivian's character is sometimes fanciful and other times just weird. Her obsession with smelling herself and wanting her unwashed scent on everything is almost animalistic and the repetition of the same adjectives to describe this tick becomes tedious throughout the novel. Her interactions with others, almost none of whom play any sort of real major role in the novel, are telling and allow the reader to see how she is viewed in general. She's clearly considered batty, not quite right. She is definitely childlike, operating most days on a whim. Appropriate social interactions are certainly a struggle for her. And so she goes about her days walking different routes around the city, trying to get back to the fairy world she's been looking for her whole life. The structure of her days is made up on the fly and only makes sense to her. These daily perambulations are broken up by a couple of small events, her uncomfortable meetings with Penelope, a woman almost as odd as Vivian; an unsolicited and unwelcome visit to her sister's family; and their rather unsuccessful return visit to her (she, however, considers it a success because "only 50 percent of the guests left in tears").Other readers have found Vivian charming and whimsical. I fear I am more like her annoyed older sister. She made me nuts. I wanted to get social services to intervene so that she had someone looking after her. And in the name of all that is holy, I wanted her to stop sniffing herself and take a bath. There was very little plot to the book to distract me from the fact that I wasn't enjoying spending time with this character either. Lally is obviously a talented writer given her beautiful turns of phrase and descriptive skill but she needed more than just a character who thought she was a changeling to hang a story on. As a starting concept, it was intriguing, but without a well-developed story around it, this feels like one long character exposition, not a fully fleshed out tale. I really wanted to be able to slip into Vivian's world. I just couldn't.

[bookscookslooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a truly unique book. It is really like nothing I have ever read before. I am still not sure whether I liked it or hated it. It confused me, entranced me, angered me, almost brought me to tears and literally made me gasp at one point. It makes no sense. I almost stopped reading it but I couldn’t put it down. I think I need to read it again.It is a conundrum.Ms. Lally has created a character in Vivian (the main Vivian, not her sister Vivian) that stays with you for days after you finish reading the book. It is Vivian’s book – there is little about much else than her quirks and her desire to find a way to the otherworld for she has been told all her life she’s a changeling and she feels she will only be at home when she can find her own people.Vivian advertises for a friend – but she only wants a friend named Penelope – and through some miracle she gets a response and someone almost as add as she answers and they form a sort of friendship but since both of them are so wrapped up in their own worlds they can’t really see what is going on in the other’s life. Yet they are good for each other.I cannot explain this book for it follows no real plot. I can tell you that I read some of the most amazing turns of phrase I have ever read. So beautifully worded I stopped my reading to go back and read them again. And again. I truly stepped out of my box for this one and I am glad that I did. I am not completely sure I grasped this book. I do think it took place somewhere over my head but it was a true reading experience.

[naberius_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Vivian doesn't feel like she fits in - and never has. Apparently, she was odd enough as a child that her parents told her she was "left by fairies," and now, living alone in Dublin, people tend to treat her like she's crazy. Friendless, she puts up an ad for a friend, specifically a friend named Penelope. In the meantime, Vivian wanders the city, mapping out a new area or neighborhood every day, seeking an escape to a better world, where there are fairies and where she will fit in. When a woman named Penelope answers her ad, Vivian's life starts 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." This bit is from Goodreads.This is the strangest book I have ever read. Considering how many books I have read, that's saying something. It's not that I didn't like the book; in fact, I found myself laughing out a loud a few times. However, there are parts of this story that are a little disturbing. That bit about how Vivian's parents told her she was left by fairies? That means they thought she was a changeling, and if you know anything about changelings, you know that humans think they are dangerous. Vivian reveals something late in the story that ties directly into this. However, there is a hint early on: "I unfold the map. spread it on a patch of carpet and write in my notebook the names of places that contain fairytales and magic and portals to another world, a world my parents believed I came from and tried to send me back to, a world they never found but I will." (p 6)Reading this book is like reading a book written by Delirium, the Dream King's sister. If you don't know who I'm talking about, try this: you know how, when you were a child, you'd spin around and around, making yourself dizzy, and then stop suddenly and feel that the world was tilting and spinning around you? That's what this book is like.The narrative of this book wanders from one thing to the next, all with bits of connectivity to Vivian's desire to find herself entry into another world. She is constantly on the lookout for doors to another place, or evidence of fairies. Things make total sense to her, although to the people around her, she's a bit odd. Actually, I revise that; she is odd and disturbing. When Vivian speaks to other people, she has a tendency to ask questions that other people find strange, and as a result, people keep her at arms-length. However, at the same time, I found her character to be kind of charming. I like how she makes lists of things she likes, or words she likes. She has an unusual way of using language, and sometimes makes up words to suit her, or the situation.Here's an example: "I continue with my list: 'Donkey's Tufty Heads, Marshmallowed Silences, Butter Lumps, Elephants, Sooz in Winter, Pencils that Write Sootily, The NAme ALoysius, Anything Egg-Shaped, Mothes that Think They Are Butterflies....' " (p 20)"I don't mind mice walking around my house - or maybe they think it's their house but I don't want to catch potential bubonic plague and have my own private Black Death." (p 78)I was frustrated by the ending of this book because I felt like I had been on a long, dizzying ride, and then finished, looked around me, and realized I hadn't gone anywhere at all. However, I can't get this story out of my head, so perhaps it's the journey that's important, and not where you end up.