Mouthing

The bestselling Irish debut novel – a multigenerational portrait of small-town life bursting with caustic wit – for fans of Jon McGregor, Elizabeth Strout and Paul Murray 
 
Welcome to Ballyrowan: a village built out of stories. Stories about the girl who got herself into trouble and disappeared to America, the brother and sister who both went mad, the priest who tried to help them and the doctor who had them committed, about your man going off with a young one half his age, the child he left behind, the neighbour who took her in, and what was said and done about it afterwards . . . 
 
‘Engrossing, funny, delightfully wicked’ Irish Times 
 
‘A novel for anyone who ever wondered what the neighbours are really up to behind closed doors’ Jan Carson, author of The Raptures 
 
‘Full of disgrace, inherited trauma and family secrets. It will make you laugh - because if you didn't, you'd surely cry’ Aingeala Flannery

Engrossing, acerbic and brilliant. Everyone here has a tale to tell... There is a pub and there is a priest. There are secrets and lies. It is by turns funny, horrifying, and all too real... Mackey’s structure requires the reader to constantly reassess their opinions of the characters. It is a fascinating magic trick, shimmering with fractal richness... Again and again we meet a character, form an opinion, and almost immediately have that wittily torpedoed

A compelling and highly entertaining read; it is a brilliant debut . . . The more people you get to know, the more compelling the novel becomes . . . The interlinked stories are like an addictive soap opera, and you never want them to end . . . Mackey observes the small community with affection and writes about them with real insight and a finely honed wit

A bittersweet love letter to small-town Irish life over several generations, a polyvocal mosaic in the vein of Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge

Irish Times, ‘Everything Books in 2024’

A hotbed of gossip and intrigue, the novel is narrated in a dark, humorous and confessional style by several generations of villagers, from the mid-20th century to the early 21st . . . Anyone with experience of a small town will be drawn to this

A startling debut . . . The world Mackey pitches her readers into is hilarious, heartbreaking and oh-so-familiar to anyone who grew up in a small community. No character is straightforward here and each voices their story in a unique and compelling way

Irish Times, 'The best books of 2024 so far'

Intimate and panoramic, a raucous gathering of voices: full of humour, pierced with longing, caught between connection and claustrophobia. Compassionate but clear-eyed, angry and elegiac, Mouthing is a portrait of our confused and often destructive yearning for grace

Orla Mackey writes with tenderness, honesty and caustic wit. Mouthing is full of characters who'll simultaneously make your blood boil and break your heart into little bits. A novel for everyone who's ever wondered what the neighbours are really up to behind closed doors . . .

Sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, a biting, unsentimental love letter to rural Irish life

All human life is here . . . Mackey’s book is told in the richly descriptive language of the local people, and calls to mind writers like Donal Ryan and Anne Griffin

A hugely accomplished, sophisticated debut, wildly original and distinct: a startling chorus of vivid, hungry characters battling for love, status and meaning in a small Irish town where not much of anything is to be found. Mackey’s characters possess a devastating, squint-eyed wit but also a capacity for moments of great, unexpected tenderness. No one is ever as alone as they might think. I cannot wait to read what Orla Mackey does next!

Lauren Mackenzie, author of 'The Couples'

Mouthing is full of disgrace, inherited trauma and family secrets that spill all over the back roads of Ossory. A book of testimonies and intertwined destinies that will make you laugh, because if you didn't you'd surely cry

Aingeala Flannery, author of 'The Amusements'

Terrifically sharp-witted and deeply moving, Orla Mackey's novel crackles with intelligence and life. Reading these pages I had the feeling, time and again, of stepping into a moving current

A wonderful novel full of memorable characters and charming voices. I was absorbed, amused and moved by Orla Mackey's masterful depiction of so-called ordinary life in all its richness and complexity

Ben Hinshaw, author of 'Exactly What You Mean'

Orla Mackey’s much-anticipated debut novel, a chorus of voices staking their claim for the truth of their times and what goes on in the rural outpost of Ballyrowan from the 1960s to the Noughties

Orla Mackey is a writer and teacher based in Kilkenny. She studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin. Her first novel, Mouthing, was an Irish Times bestseller. Her second novel, Farrell and Son, will be published in spring 2027.

Ballyrowan is a sleepy corner of rural Ireland where nothing ever happens. Where everyone knows everyone else's business, and everyone has an opinion on it. Where family feuds simmer and intensify across the generations. Where young and old delight in dragging each other down like crabs in a barrel. 
 
Following the fortunes of this small community from the mid-20th century to the early 21st, Mouthing is a bittersweet love letter to the pleasures (and frustrations) of village life.

Orla Mackey

Farrell and Son fizzes with life - as tragedy and comedy, microscopic and epic, a novel of beautifully realised contrasts - set amid the textured vitality of a small rural community and playing out in the not-so-silent presence of death. In Orla Mackey's hands, life is fragile and funny and sometimes heartstoppingly moving

Kathleen MacMahon, author of 'Nothing But Blue Sky'

A polyphonic tour de force... I got a giddy feeling in my chest reading it. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Farrell & Son encapsulates the multitude of reasons why the website RIP.ie is so firmly embedded in the Irish national psyche. I finished the novel with a determination to read anything that Orla Mackey writes

Louise Nealon, author of 'Everything That Is Beautiful'

Farrell and Son is a profound novel of grief and recovery told with compassion and subtle brilliance... populated by characters that continually reveal new layers of complexity and contradiction

Engrossing, acerbic and brilliant... It is by turns funny, horrifying and all too real

Mick Farrell is the only funeral director in Ballyrowan. He is also a very unpopular man - pedantic, tight-fisted and stiff as a corpse. His long-suffering wife Catriona works alongside him, preparing the departed for their final send-off. Their daughter Niamh, a sweet, strange girl, can't wait to grow up and join the family business. She isn't allowed inside the funeral parlour but she sneaks in whenever she can to watch her parents tending to the dead. 
 
But when the Farrells, who have made death their business, are suddenly confronted by grief themselves, the fault-lines running through their eccentric home start to fracture. Catriona's mental health teeters on a knife edge. Mick is drawn back to dangerous old temptations. And Niamh, left to her own devices as her parents unravel, resorts to confiding in a recently deceased old lady, the latest customer to pass through the funeral home, and is astonished to hear the corpse speaking back…

Orla Mackey

Books by Orla Mackey

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