"Mouthing", by Orla Mackey

Hi everyone! Welcome to a new chapter of our book club in English! 🤗 This month, we will read "Mouthing", by Irish author Orla Mackey. This event is free, all you need to do is to come and share your thoughts with the group. 😄

The Book

Welcome to Ballyrowan.

This sleepy corner of rural Ireland may seem tranquil, but scratch the surface and you'll find a hotbed of gossip and intrigue - endless material for mouthing - and a town full of people only too happy to oblige in spreading the bad news.

Narrated by several generations of villagers, Mouthing traces the fortunes of one small community from the mid-20th century to the early 21st, in a series of highly confessional and darkly hilarious monologues. The good people of Ballyrowan delight in twisting the knife, in tormenting one another, in perfecting the art of schadenfreude. And, it becomes clear, none of them are entirely reliable witnesses.

As each character offers their version of 'the truth', upending our assumptions at every turn, we see how feuds are passed down through the generations, how families are estranged or reunited and fortunes made or lost, how strict social expectations loosen over decades (and how some things remain stubbornly unchanged). And how secret hopes and private sorrows, triumph and humiliation, pleasure and grief are all absorbed into the merciless chorus of mouthing.

The Author

Orla Mackey is an Irish writer and schoolteacher based in County Kilkenny. She studied English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and came to wider attention after winning the 2022 Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair, which led to the publication of her debut novel, Mouthing, in 2024.

Raised in the small village of Gathabawn, where her family's pub has been a community fixture for generations, Mackey draws heavily on rural Irish life and its rich storytelling traditions.