Caitriona Lally Home Economics: A Memoir

€16.95

New

Code 9781835940358

Description

Binding: Paperback

Date Published: 17 Apr 2026

'Since I've had my first book published, I've earned more from cleaning than from writing. The home economics don't add up.'

Between 2015 and 2021, Caitriona Lally published her first two novels, Eggshells and Wunderland. To buy her time to write during those years, she returns to the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin, a job she enjoyed as a student. This begins a negotiation between the practical and creative demands of her life, further complicated when she gets pregnant and almost impossible when the pandemic hits.

At Trinity, Lally and her colleagues move through empty, hallowed libraries, bonding over rude conference attendees. At home, she is raising two children who don't sleep. And the success of her first book makes her second novel seem even more arduous. It is cleaning work that brings her satisfaction - immediate and lasting.

In her first memoir, Lally writes with bracing honesty and humour about trying to solve the equation of mother + cleaner + writer. Forward and thought-provoking, self-deprecating and soaked in her singularly frank voice, Caitriona Lally puzzles over personal economics, creativity and what 'success' and 'failure' can really mean in this writer's life.

About the Author

CAITRIONA LALLY is the recipient of the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature (2018) and a Lannan Fellowship for Fiction (2019). In October 2021, she was announced as the inaugural Rooney Writer Fellow at Trinity Long Room Hub. Her first novel, Eggshells, was published in the US by Melville House (2017) and in the UK by Borough Press (2018). Caitriona lives in Dublin and divides her time between her young children, writing and working in the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin. Her second novel, Wunderland, was published in 2021 by New Island Books and Home Economics is her first memoir.

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