Meeting debut author Caitriona Lally in the Book Upstairs Café on D’Olier Street, I was extremely relieved to discover that, unlike her novel’s main character, her hair wasn’t brittle and her hygiene was impeccable. The stinker in question, Vivian, is a woman of unknown age who lives alone in the house she inherited from her great-aunt, along with a bunch of chairs and a rapidly deteriorating pet known as Lemon Fish. She is, as Lally sums up for me, “bonkers”. Eggshells records a series of walks Vivian takes through Dublin in her efforts to find a portal to the otherworld. Settling down with a mug of tea and a latte, I began to talk with the creator of one of the strangest and...
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