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
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.