[1] McCarthy was the author of five novels, Remember Me, And No Bird Sang, Crescendo, Shame the Devil and After the Rain with Poolbeg Press.
She sold over 100,000 copies of her works and three of her titles have been translated into other languages including French, German and Finnish.
Her work has been praised by Time magazine.,[2] McCarthy was part of the growth in contemporary women's Irish fiction which emerged in the 1990s.
Other notable authors of this movement include Patricia Scanlan, Maeve Binchy and Cathy Kelly.
McCarthy's books were regarded as 'thinking fiction' within the industry, and were a marked departure from the simultaneously flourishing genre of holiday novels, also known as "chick lit".