Declan Kiberd on Eggshells: ‘an edgy and visionary book’

Catriona Lally has written a book which reminds us that the seeming eccentric is often simply a person with a deeper-than-average understanding of normality.

Her central character makes the familiar world of postmodern Dublin seem very strange and the strange world of fairyland seem more familiar. Her voice is as original as her take on things. Her character walks through the streets of Dublin, a thirtysomething latter-day version of Leopold Bloom, who performs a kind of reverse anthropology (as he did) on everything from nosy neighbours to noisy shops.

At times, her protagonist is in rebellion against a social consensus which prescribes narrow options for such a woman; but at other times she seems marvellously unaware of “the rules” which she so mysteriously flouts ... as if she is truly a visitor from another world altogether.

Lally’s successful fusion of fairy-lore with an urban setting reminds me a little of the writing of the great James Stephens – and she combines his kind of fabulism with a radical social analysis. As her protagonist seeks for a “portal” into the virtual world of fairyland, it isn’t hard to imagine that search as emblematic of all attempts by an unlucky post-Tiger generation to “find an opening” in the form of a decent job.

This is an edgy and visionary book, conveying well the sights, sounds and feelings of contemporary Dublin – a remarkable debut.

Declan Kiberd is the Donald and Marilyn Keough professor of Irish studies and professor of English at the University of Notre Dame