The Changeling Myth in Eggshells

In Eggshells, Catriona Lally uses the changeling myth to characterize Vivian, a mentally disabled woman who has just inherited her great Aunt's house in Dublin.

The death of her Aunt leaves Vivian more vulnerable than ever. Her only other relatives is a condescending sister. 

Accepting her parents' myth about her--that she is a changeling, Vivian,  embarks on journeys by foot and bus to find a portal to the fairy world.

Vivian is undeniably lonely. One of the first things Vivian does after her Aunt dies is seek a friend. Lacking social skills, she puts out an advertisement for friend named Penelope. 

Incredibly, someone answers the ad. Penelope, an artist who is just a little less madcap than Vivian, assists Vivian her with her eccentric schemes.

Though the pace can be slow, this novel will appeal to those who like quirky characters. 

She walks around libraries, museums, bridges, cafes and looks for small doors that might lead to a fairy world.

"I pass underneath Merchant's Arch and close my eyes, hoping for a transformation---an arch is surely as good a portal as any--but the smell of stale piss doesn't fade to flowers, and the noise of the traffic doesn't change to fairy bells."

Superbass [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]

Much of the charm of the novel is that the character visits real places with odd place names. There really is a Yellow road and Emerald street in Dublin. She copies graffiti into her notebook, looking for patterns and "thin places" where the real world and the fairy world intersect. 

She walks up the quays towards O'Connell Bridge and Bride street near the place where St. Patrick baptized local inhabitants. She goes to the Chester Beatty Library to look at magical things and the dervish dance. Yet, even doing a whirling dervish dance doesn't result in a transformation. 

Eggshells was the 2018 winner of the Rooney Prize for Literature. 

Circumcircles

Free Math animations on the web. 

Circumcircle is a circle that passes through every vertex of a triangle.

https://www.mathopenref.com/trianglecircumcircle.html

Play with the vertexes to change the size of the triangle and change the circumcircle. 

Right triangles are a special case:

In the case of a right triangle, the hypotenuse is a diameter of the circumcircle, and its center is exactly at the midpoint of the hypotenuse. This is the same situation as Thales Theorem, where the diameter subtends a right angle to any point on a circle's circumference. (www.mathopenref.com).

Gone Without a Trace by Mary Torjussen

Hannah's life is upended when her boyfriend Matt disappears. Hannah lives in the Wirral peninsula and is on the fast track for promotion at the company where she works.

Matt doesn't just disappear. He obliterates his presence by taking every single item he owns from her apartment and deleting every photo and text from her computer and phone. 

A quick call to the architectural firm where Matt worked establishes the fact that he no longer works there. His mother has also changed residences. No one can give Hannah any answers. Worst of all, she has been receiving strange text messages and believes someone has been entering her house without her permission. When she goes for a jog, someone films her, and then sends the video to her phone.

While this tense-filled situation has no easy explanation, several characters are suspect. Katie, Hannah's best friend, has always been insanely competitive with Hannah. Her next door neighbors, members of the neighborhood watch, are seriously creepy. Her co-worker seems to be on her side but he also seems deceitful.

 Given how shady her close associations are, any one of these characters could be gas lighting Hannah. Matt has always seen supportive but maybe she's seeing a side of Matt she never knew existed?

Torjussen gives her character an intriguing puzzle to decipher. The reader gets a jolt when a surprising twist is thrown in to the mix. A thrilling, yet well-developed novel with a unexpected conclusion.