Eggshells

— Irish Book of the Year Finalist!
— An Amazon Best Books of the Year So Far pick!

A whimsical, touching debut about loneliness, friendship and hope...

 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, the neighbors treat her like she's crazy, her older sister condescends to her, social workers seem to have registered her as troubled, and she hasn't 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, she 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.

• The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (Penguin Classics)
• Weep Not, Child (Penguin African Writers Series)
• The Passion According to G.H. (New Directions Books)
• The Invention of Morel (New York Review Books Classics)
• Swing Time: A Novel
• The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
• Subject and Strategy: A Writer's Reader
• Norwegian Wood
• Big Sky (Jackson Brodie): A Novel (Jackson Brodie)
• The Practical Skeptic: Core Concepts in Sociology