In Ordinary Time

In 1993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahonleft Ireland for NewYork,carrying two suitcases anda ton of unseen baggage. It took years, and abitterstruggle with alcohol addiction, to unpick theintricate traumas ofher past and present. Candid yet lyrical, In Ordinary Time mines the ways that trauma reverberates through timeand through individual lives,drawing connections to the events andrhythms 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.