THE EGG

A smart and funny debut novel about the anxieties of reproduction, motherhood, set in Washington DC and small-town Ireland.

Grace is broke, living in a tiny apartment in Washington DC, telling friends and family back in Ireland that she's having the time of her life. Then she discovers that she can donate her eggs in exchange for money, a lifeline that she grasps without thought for the future. But this small action takes on huge proportions in the years that follow, plunging her headlong into the frontlines of reproduction. As her twenties take shape and people come and go in her life, Grace flits between Washington DC and small-town Ireland, wondering where she fits in and whether that one small act means that she is now a mother. Sharply observed, funny and deeply modern, The Egg looks at our contradictory and complex attitudes to reproduction: from something we desperately keep at bay to the one and only thing we want in the space of a decade, from those who are child-free by choice, to those who want nothing more than to be mothers. It asks searching questions about who can and cannot have children and the ethics of reproduction in our divided, failing world. Witty, heartfelt and with its finger firmly on the pulse of modern life, The Egg is a deeply original debut from a vivid new voice in Irish writing. Dearbhaile Houston was born in Dublin and grew up in Co. Galway. Her short fiction has appeared in Banshee, The Dublin Review, The Irish Times and Tolka. She has a PhD. in English Literature from Trinity College Dublin, where she currently teaches.