Caitriona Lally – författare

'Since I’ve had my first book published, I’ve earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don’t add up.' Between 2015 and 2021 Caitríona Lally published her first two novels, Eggshells and Wunderland. To buy her time to write during those years, she returned to the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin, a job she enjoyed as a student. This began a negotiation between the practical and creative demands of her life, further complicated when she became pregnant and downright baffling when the pandemic hit.At Trinity, Lally and her colleagues moved through empty, hallowed libraries, bonding over rude conference attendees. At home, she was raising two children who didn’t sleep. And the success of her first book was making her second novel seem even more arduous. Amidst all this, it was cleaning work that brought her satisfaction – immediate and lasting.In her first memoir, Lally writes with honesty and humour about trying to solve the equation of mother + cleaner + writer. Forward and thought-provoking, self-deprecating and soaked in her singularly frank voice, Caitríona Lally puzzles over personal economics, creativity and what 'success' and 'failure' really mean in this writer’s life.

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 INDEPENDENTVivian 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.

This, the fifth and final volume in the Trinity Tales series, completes a cycle that began with tales from the 1960s. It invites readers to step into the world of Trinity College as it was in the first decade of this century through the reflections of students who attended the university during those years.Within its pages lie the stories of twenty-eight graduates from a mix of diverse backgrounds whose experiences may dispel the myths of what it means to be a ‘Trinity student’. The collection reveals the rapidly changing world of the early 2000s. This was a time of the internet revolution, when social media first affected student life, when mobile phones and laptops became ubiquitous, when handwritten work was passing into history, when The Buttery closed its doors – and all this coming against the backdrop of an overheating then imploding Irish economy.This kaleidoscope of recollections captures a student body in transformation and features stories of personal discovery and achievement against the odds. For some it proved a life-changing era when sexual, racial or class barriers were confronted.This volume concludes a remarkable half-century journey, portraying the lives of others, and of ourselves.