Manhattan to West Cork: Alice's Adventures in Ireland: 2016

2016 | Biography

As a young girl Alice Carey came to realise that 'home' can mean different things. The only child of Kerry immigrants to New York in search of a better life, Alice's isolated and sometimes violent childhood was transformed when her mother found work as a maid to legendary Broadway producer Jean Dalrymple. In Miss D's elegant Park Avenue town house, 'Little Alice' was exposed to a life she had only seen in films. 'Big Alice' saved every cent for them to visit Ireland every chance they had, travelling steerage on ocean liners. The radical contrast between 1960s rural Ireland and cosmopolitan Manhattan caused confusion and conflict. Yet many years later, in a blast of middle-age madness, Alice and her husband fell in love with an abandoned Georgian farmhouse in west Cork. As they restored its stables, Alice unearthed disturbing childhood memories played out in wildly divergent homes in New York City, Fire Island and Killarney. From Manhattan to West Cork is a bittersweet tale of a girl trapped between two worlds, juxtaposed with a woman struggling to make peace with her past.

Alice Carey (Author)