Books

In Ordinary Time: A tale of emigration and return haunted by ghosts of personal and ancestral pain

mysticism underlying the story – or the Jungian approach

Carmel McMahon: in her first book In Ordinary Time, the author is open and raw in her examination of personal and family trauma

The idea for Carmel McMahon’s first book came to her when she learned of the death of a young woman in New York in 2011. Like McMahon, Grace Farrell had emigrated there from Ireland in the mid-1990s and struggled with alcohol addiction.

But although Grace had got sober many times, she “was never able to stay that way”. Her body was found in a side portal of St Brigid’s Church in the city’s East Village.