Hamish Hamilton snaps up 'witty and wily' debut from Mackey

Hamish Hamilton has snapped up a “witty and wily” debut novel by Orla Mackey. 

Hermione Thompson, senior commissioning editor, acquired UK and Commonwealth rights including serial and audio to Mouthing from Nicola Barr at The Bent Agency. It will publish in spring 2024.  

The synopsis says: “Garrulous, keen-eyed and slyly poignant, Mouthing is a multigenerational, multi-voiced portrait of life in an ordinary Irish village from the mid-20th century to the present day. Recounted as a series of confessions to an unseen listener, the anecdotes and observations offered by the residents of Ballyrowan are by turns viciously entertaining, gleefully unsettling and deeply affecting. And as their voices accumulate, intersect and overlap, reinforcing (or contradicting) one another across the decades, what emerges is nothing less than the teeming diorama of humanity: all its folly, all its difference and sameness, all its petty cruelties and missed chances, all its indomitable capacity for hope.” 

Thompson said: “Reading this novel feels almost like witnessing a piece of theatre: the characters insist on your attention. They are irrepressible, irascible, witty, wily and undeniably alive. There is an unexpected pathos in watching the generations turn over – some things changing and dying away, some things clinging on – which struck me to my core. I’m delighted to have persuaded Orla to join the Hamish Hamilton list.” 

Mackey added: “Mouthing arose out of my desire to represent the voices of rural working class Irish people and to record the rhythms of language of the Irish countryside. I’m delighted that it has found a home with Hamish Hamilton.” 

Mackey was born and raised in Kilkenny. She studied English literature at Trinity College, Dublin, and is now a primary school teacher. The unpublished manuscript for Mouthing was a winner of the Dublin Novel Fair 2022.