Are you a member of a book club? If so, do you meet virtually or in person?

I attend a book club run by Pangur Bán Bookshop in conjunction with Craoibhín Ballina. We meet in person once a month.

At our last book club meeting we talked about In Ordinary Time by Carmel McMahon. If you’ve read the book, I’d love for you to share your opinion in the comment box at the end of the post.

The Blurb:

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.

In Ordinary Time is a hybrid memoir. The memoir part of the book is Carmel’s life from 1973 to the present, which covers her alcoholism, sibling loss and immigration. Other themes that run through the book are Irish history and older pre-Christian times and the mythological.

Book Club Discussion

Carmel was in attendance at the meeting, and as you can imagine, she was bombarded with many questions about her book. She was very open and honest about her journey.

Carmel’s years spent in New York weren’t altogether easy. She flitted from home to home, battled alcoholism, never seemed to fit in, and found it difficult to let go of grief. She eventually turned a corner in her life and sought help.

In 2011, after the death of an Irish immigrant outside St Brigid’s Church in Manhattan’s East Village, Carmel questioned why a young Irish woman died an alcoholic death outside a church named after an Irish saint, built by Irish famine refugees in the 19^th century. The young woman was born outside of marriage in 1970’s Ireland, a circumstance that Carmel believed had to have played a part in shaping this woman’s life and death.

Carmel unravelled the enigma of her emotional suffering as she delved into an exploration of historical traumas from past lifetimes. She took a close look at the impact of ancestral emotional wounds that we carry. Wounds that heal for some but never for others. She raises many issues and questions in her book.

That emotion came up yet again at the book club discussion; shame. That thing that keeps us silent. We often fear the truth because we fear the stigma of shame.

Do we not discuss alcoholism in women as much as alcoholism in men? I’m not so sure to be honest. I think it’s a more open subject these days, but certainly it was talked about less in the past.

In Ordinary Time is an education in parts. For example, many of us hadn’t known about the Mary Smith experiments in the 1850’s. Horrendous!

My Thoughts:

I’m seldom drawn to memoirs and autobiographies. I have to say, I did enjoy this book very much and probably wouldn’t have picked up if it weren’t for the book club. The story is very personal and it takes a brave person to write and publish such a book. Many of us could tell similar stories about our families and ourselves, if we only knew where to begin.

Unlike a lot of my peers and relatives from the 80s, I didn’t emigrate to America or even to England when I’d finished school. I was too much of a home bird. I don’t think I’d have survived if I’d left home at twenty years of age.

That’s how young Carmel McMahon was when she left Ireland for a new life in New York in 1993. The emotional baggage that she carried with her at twenty years of age was heavier than the suitcases full of her belongings.

This story pulled at every part of me—emotionally and physically. I found myself questioning many aspects of myself and my family. I thought a lot about the ‘truth behind the famine’. The lies we’ve been fed after all these years and the importance of truth.

I thought about the grandparents I’ve never known and realise I know so little about them, especially the women.

What exactly do we learn from our family tree and is it enough? Is it enough to even begin our understanding of our tangled emotions, the ones that burden us? Every woman has her own story to tell but not all women dare to tell. Why?

What causes some of us to suffer addictions? To suffer autoimmune diseases? To suffer constant headaches and migraines? Do we inherit all these, not just genetically? So many questions.

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Carmel left New York and returned to her homeland in 2021. She lives a quiet life in the West of Ireland with her partner and her dogs.

A poignant line from Carmel’s book;

“There is no loneliness like alcoholic loneliness because alcohol wants you alone.”

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