By: Sebastian Barry Publisher: Viking Adult Average Rating: Binding: Hardcover Label: Viking Adult Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 304 Publication Date: June 12, 2008
Product Description: A gorgeous new novel from the author of the Man Booker finalist A Long Long Way
As a young woman, Roseanne McNulty was one of the most beautiful and beguiling girls in County Sligo, Ireland. Now, as her hundredth year draws near, she is a patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, and she decides to record the events of her life.
As Roseanne revisits her past, hiding the manuscript beneath the floorboards in her bedroom, she learns that Roscommon Hospital will be closed in a few months and that her caregiver, Dr. Grene, has been asked to evaluate the patients and decide if they can return to society. Roseanne is of particular interest to Dr. Grene, and as he researches her case he discovers a document written by a local priest that tells a very different story of Roseanne’s life than what she recalls. As doctor and patient attempt to understand each other, they begin to uncover long-buried secrets about themselves.
Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict, The Secret Scripture is an epic story of love, betrayal, and unavoidable tragedy, and a vivid reminder of the stranglehold that the Catholic Church had on individual lives for much of the twentieth century.
....Complexity befalls this Irish-Catholic family.... While Sebastian Barry is new to me, it didn't stop me from enjoying this book.
A great writer with a great story to tell.
The scene is set in the Irish-Catholic realm and features a highly devote family centering around Roseanne Clear, the daughter of a well-respected man named Joe. After a dark and cloudy night the family suffers some hardships and young Roseanne seeks to fly from her nest only to be stricken with more hardship.
....Complexity befalls this Irish-Catholic family....
another fine book by Sebastian Barry ebastian Barry has done it again. I love his work and this one is no exception. I couldn't even talk after I finished this book (which is rare...I always have something to say, just ask my husband!), and I was a wee bit choked up. So...you may want to have a tissue at the ready. I read this in just about 3 hours and couldn't stop reading it except to fetch cookies I was baking out of the oven every 12 minutes. A beautiful book and one that really made me a bit angry when I think about it...the treatment of this young woman by a Catholic priest was just sad.
Basic plot: Roseanne Clear McNulty is probably a hundred years old, and lives in a mental institution which is about to be torn down. She is being assessed by the head of the place, a Dr. Grene, who has to decide if she's able to make it on her own on the outside. She in turn, has been writing a record of her life and keeps the thing hidden in her room under the floorboard. In this diary she tells of not only her life, but indirectly of the politics and troubles of Ireland. She loses her father at a young age, has a troubled mother, and has to take on life completely unprepared. Her life is ultimately ruined (I won't say how) by an Irish priest named Father Gaunt -- who obviously hates & mistrusts women and takes it upon himself to turn her life completely upside down at a time when she was happy. At that time, the priests of the church wielded a lot of power, so much so that they held the lives of people in their hands. But ... no matter how badly things were for Roseanne, and although her memory may fail her at times, she tries so hard above all else to be fair in her memories ...even to those who were less than kind to her. But Roseanne's story is one of two in this book -- Dr. Grene has his own demons with which he must grapple.
An amazing story; it's easy to see why Sebastian Barry's work keeps getting nominated for literary awards. He's an incredible writer, and his glimpses into Ireland's upheavals and the human costs of the troubled times are staples in his books. I can most highly recommend this book to anyone familiar with Barry's writing, or to anyone interested in Irish fiction, or to those who want to put a human face on Ireland's suffering, or to anyone interested in the (as the book cover blurb puts it) "stranglehold" of the Catholic Church on the Irish people. Although maybe a tad melodramatic toward the end (hence the hanky) I loved this book and I won't soon forget it.
perhaps the best ive read this year the other reviews have covered it, except I would add that Barry's insights into the nature and functions of memory are profoundly interesting to me as a human being and as a historian. Read it.
The Perfect Summer Read This is the best book I've read since "The Kite Runner"! Written by an Irish author, it has the expected tragedy and angst, but it's the beauty of the storytelling that lifts this book above so many other "recommended" fiction books I've read this year. It was one of those rare books that kept me ignoring items on my "To Do" list so I could sneak in another chapter before bedtime. Regretfully, it was only 300 pages, which flew by much too quickly. I'm glad I have Barry's "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty" on hand to turn to next. However, since "The Secret Scripture" included the character of Eneas in the plot, I wish I'd read that book first.
An elegant and intelligent novel of love, murder, betrayal and sacrifice Growing up in Ireland, during the Great War, golden-haired Roseanne Clear adores her Presbyterian father, Joe, a happy and curious individual who is the "cleanest man in the Christian world, all Sligo anyhow." Her mother, Cissy, is an anxious woman who "suffers strangely under the halo of beauty." The greatest joy of Roseanne's young life is walking with her exotic-looking mother at dusk to meet her father on his way home from a local Catholic cemetery, where he works as superintendent.
But death arrives unannounced at the Clears' doorstep when the Irish troubles come calling at the cemetery. After that dark and disturbing night, Roseanne's young life, and that of her family, changes forever. Shortly afterwards, Father Gaunt, a local priest who has "no antennae for grief," informs Joe that he is to be removed from his job at the cemetery. City officials have found Joe a new job as a rat catcher. The once proud and fastidious caretaker becomes "a living man exiled from the dead."
Following the family's drastic change in circumstances, her father is not the same. After his death and her mother's descent into madness, Roseanne, who is still in her teens, tries to carve out a future for herself. She finds a job, falls in love and marries Tom McNulty, "the decentest man." But her happiness is short-lived, as she eventually ends up in Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, a place "where sisters, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, all forgotten, lie."
Half a century later the hospital is on the verge of collapse and slated to be torn down. Before the facility is destroyed, Dr. William Grene, the Senior Psychiatrist who has attended the hospital's patients for more than three decades, has been called upon to assess which patients can be put back into the community and which are to be moved to a new facility. For years he has been inexplicably drawn to Mrs. McNulty, and as the time approaches for the hospital's demolition, he searches to find the reason for her hospitalization.
During her decades in the mental institution, Roseanne has learned the virtue of silence, but she still has good eyesight and a steady hand. While Dr. Grene searches for the truth about her, Roseanne carefully documents her recollections in a manuscript that she hides under a floorboard beneath her bed. As the good doctor unravels the complicated and conflicting accounts of her life, and as she records her memories of the past, they uncover deeply buried and safely guarded secrets, while coming to realize the truth about themselves.
Roseanne, like the Ireland of her birth, is complex and flawed, yet deserving of love and grace. In spite of her dire and tangled circumstances, although neglected and forlorn, her spirit endures and hope prevails.
Acclaimed author Sebastian Barry has written an elegant and intelligent novel of love, murder, betrayal and sacrifice. It's a thought-provoking look at the destructive power of well-intentioned people to destroy lives and the redemptive power of truth to heal, no matter how long it takes.
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