HOME ECONOMICS

'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, Caitríona 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, Caitríona Lally puzzles over personal economics, creativity and what ‘success’ and ‘failure’ can really mean in this writer’s life.