Home Economics by Caitríona Lally has been pitched as a memoir about her time working in the housekeeping department at Trinity College Dublin while she waits for the publication of her first two novels in 2015 and 2021. But, for me, this book goes far beyond memoir. It is social commentary. It is a reflection on womanhood, work, and motherhood, all wrapped up in a beautifully written, self-deprecating account of Lally’s life as a cleaner in Trinity.
This book – and in some ways Caitríona herself – has been framed as an interesting story because she is an award-winning writer who is so “poor” that she has to clean toilets. One US news source went so far as to say of her success, “Janitor had given up writing until college where she cleans gives her prestigious award”. The hook for Lally’s memoir should come from her being a cleaner who has done good. A girl who escaped her destiny – maybe? But this is far from the truth.
Through her wonderful way with words, Lally quickly reminds us that she has chosen cleaning; she describes her love of cleaning – as a profession, as a process, as a place of satisfaction. She writes about the camaraderie and connection that comes from working with the women, and the occasional man, in the housekeeping department of Trinity. Of the sense of achievement she gets from the job. This is not a “this poor cleaner wants to be a writer” story. It is a story about a writer who has chosen to clean so she can continue to write; a story of a woman who actually likes cleaning for a living.
I loved the way she describes the internal workings of the cleaning system in Trinity. Having spent 12 years there myself, and having befriended many of the staff who cleaned and cooked, her portrayal of these workers as decent, supportive and kind feels accurate and important. She describes the job as rewarding because tasks begin and end – you see what you’ve done. She describes the how and why of the process; each sentence reminds the reader of the importance of the work; of the importance of cleaning.
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She is not presenting herself as a rags-to-riches story. She is clear: she had enough privilege to go to university, she comes from a good family who cared, and she is choosing cleaning work to support her writing.
What the book does brilliantly is quietly, and indirectly, critique the so-called elite profession of writing. Despite being an award-winning author, Lally cannot survive on writing alone. She has to work. That juxtaposition forces reflection. I found myself questioning my own views on cleaning. (For context, I cleaned Connolly Station for two hours a day and hated every minute of it.) I’ve often used that job as a marker of where I came from, something to move beyond.
I make a joke in my own book about being wrongly identified as a cleaner by a Trinity student, when I was in fact a lecturer there. Lally unsettled that thinking. Maybe cleaning is enough for some. Maybe it is a choice. As she points out, it is a secure public-sector job – with a pension, sick pay, holiday pay – more than many people have. Her reflection on writing as being harder, and having less security, was powerful and left me doubting what I value.
The book moves between light, almost funny moments – cleaning lecturers’ offices, frustration at students leaving rubbish behind – and much darker reflections on becoming a mother. Her account of the traumatic birth of her first child is deeply affecting; I found myself genuinely upset reading it. She writes about the aftermath – her daughter’s facial palsy, the therapy, the fear – with honesty and care, bringing the reader through guilt, anger, denial and love. So much love.
Her writing on motherhood – on its total impact on your time, your body, your sleep, your ability to think – is some of the best I’ve read. She captures things that academic research often can’t. She also writes powerfully about not being able to write – the doubt, the paralysis, the frustration. Despite her success, she presents herself as unsure, self-critical, constantly questioning. It makes her very easy to connect with. She is funny, honest and incredibly skilled. There are award-winning sentences throughout this book.
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Her reflections on how a mother’s skill is often undervalued: “remembering the elements of the periodic table and death toll from wars is considered a sign of intelligence, but knowing the health history and food whims of children isn’t”.
Or how fathers are praised as heroic for the smallest contribution: “she seems not to notice the two-month old strapped to my chest, the almost two-year-old in the buggy, the groceries packed into the bottom of the buggy, the rucksack full of groceries on my back, the three-litre drum of milk dangling from the fingers from my hand. I’m very lucky, I say defeatedly, isn’t he great. Sometimes it isn’t worth the fight: I will always fall below the bar, he will always be above.”
These come in short, sharp, often one-line observations that floored me.
What is striking is how much she says while naming almost no one. Her partner, her children, her colleagues – no one is identified. It is all held within her own perspective, her own experience of those five years. And it works.
As you can probably tell, I liked this book. As a memoir writer myself, there are things in Lally’s style I will take with me – her clarity, her restraint, her ability to find meaning in the ordinary, her honesty about what she does well and what she doesn’t. And her love for her children, even while acknowledging what motherhood costs her, is powerful.
This book takes time to get into. It starts slowly, and it doesn’t follow the usual memoir structure with a clear opening hook. It asks the reader to trust it. But if you do, it delivers.
I love books that leave me changed, and this one did. It made me reconsider my own views on cleaning, on work, and on what we value. This is not a story about a struggling writer forced into cleaning. It is a story about motherhood, about compromise, about choice, and about the constant renegotiation of a woman’s life.
It will stay with me. I would place it alongside books like Are You Somebody? by Nuala O’Faolain and Still by Julia Kelly for its honesty and prose. If you like wonderful words, deeply affecting stories and the odd laugh, this book is for you.
Katriona O’Sullivan is the author of the award-winning memoir Poor and Hungry: A Biography of My Body, to be published by Wildfire on April 23rd.
