‘In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History’ by Carmel McMahonġ993, aged twenty, Carmel Mc Mahon left Ireland for New York, carrying $500, two suitcases and a ton of unseen baggage.

A powerful and yet delicate mix of the personal and political, Milk is an unflinching and unique memoir that looks at the experience of motherhood against the backdrop of a seemingly changed Ireland. Alice Kinsella is a young mother, giving birth to her son in her mid-twenties, adrift in a new town and navigating her newly accompanied life.

MILK: On Motherhood and Madness by Alice KinsellaĪ map of motherhood, Milk is at once a gentle and meditative story of one woman’s experience of new motherhood as well as a confronting and often painful examination of the experience of having children in contemporary Ireland. Hear writers Carmel McMahon and Alice Kinsella read from their books ‘In Ordinary Time: Fragments of a Family History’ and ‘MILK: On Motherhood and Madness’.

National Emerging Writer Programme Overview.

Intimate, warm, startlingly vivid and gentle, this is at once a delicate reflection on a moment of gigantic change in body and mind and a powerful, often painful confrontation of the politics of a country so deeply unsure about its women. How does this country treat its mothers? What does it mean to be forever tethered? Forever in love?Set against the backdrop of a seemingly changed Ireland, in Milk Alice draws for us her own map of motherhood. With her body struggling to recover, darker intrusions ran through the days and nights of new motherhood.įor the first time, she considered the experiences of her mother, her grandmother, and the generations of women who came before them.

And soon Alice's world began to expand and contract in ways she could never have imagined. Into this warm cocoon, this big, empty house, would arrive a little baby.

'Sublime' - Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers'Here is a writer who matters' - The Irish Times'A book about the raw, riotous, brutally beautiful act of being alive.' - Kerri ni Dochartaigh, author of Thin Places'Milk is a raw, unvarnished journey down the mothering rabbit hole' The Irish IndependentAlice Kinsella was in her mid-twenties when she became pregnant with her first child, newly engaged and about to embark on a life in an unfamiliar town on the west coast of Ireland.

Milk by Alice Kinsella