In Ordinary Time, Carmel McMahon
'A vivid, evocative and resonant counterpoint of time, memory and meaning' , Joseph O’Connor, award-winning author of Shadowplay
In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying $500, two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and a bitter struggle with alcohol addiction, to unpick the intricate traumas of her past and present.
Candid yet lyrical, In Ordinary Time mines the ways that trauma reverberates through time and through individual lives, drawing connections to the events and rhythms of Ireland's long Celtic, early Christian and Catholic history. From tragically lost siblings to the broader social scars of the Famine and the Magdalene Laundries, Mc Mahon sketches the evolution of a consciousness from her conservative 1970s upbringing to 1990s New York, and back to the much-changed Ireland of today.
Carmel McMahon reading from In Ordinary Time
If you love literary memoir by newly discovered Irish authors then have we got the book for you! Carmel Mc Mahon’s In Ordinary Time is a revelation - a multi-layered exploration of memory, grief and addiction that mines the ways that trauma reverberates through time.
From tragically lost siblings to the broader social scars of the Famine and the Magdalene Laundries, Carmel sketches the evolution of a consciousness – from her conservative 1970s upbringing to her emigrant’s tale in New York in the 1990s, and back to the much-changed Ireland of today. This is a perfect book for anyone who enjoyed Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self and Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These.
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