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Loading... The Secret Scriptureby Sebastian Barry
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Roseann McNulty was the most beautiful girl in the village of Sligo, but as a Protestant she wasn't considered an acceptable wife for a good Catholic boy. Narrated by Roseann at the age of 100, she tells the story of her life and how she came to be a resident of an asylum for the insane for the past sixty years. Dark story yet Roseann tells is without malice or grudges. Great audiobook! (  ) eejjennings | Nov 19, 2009 |  The Achilles heel of this Booker favourite had been the unlikely ending. But I suspect that White Tiger, the eventual winner, is unlikely to be a better a novel. The story is a two-hander related in alternate chapters by Doctor Greene, a sympathetic psychiatrist at a mental hospital close to closure in Sligo and one of its long term patients, the clearly sane and remarkably lucid centenarian, Roseanne McNulty. The gentle to-ing and fro-ing of voice is like a beautiful, calming tide in this affecting novel of memory. But yes, the melodrama is a bit overdone and the ending is fairly predictable and you do wish it wasn't going to be true. (  ) dylanwolf | Nov 8, 2009 | It was after I got two-thirds of the way through this book that it really caught my interest. It tackles big universal issues such as what is constitutes truth or history, and how much anyone can rely on his memory, studying them in the very specific context of Ireland during and after the civil war that followed the break from the United Kingdom of what later became the Irish Republic. There is also what was, to me at least, an unexpected twist affecting two of the main characters that only emerges in the final chapters. ( ) dsc73277 | Nov 2, 2009 | Interesting and well written but a bit predicable , I could work out who was who and the plot basis by the time I was half way through. Decent enough but I can't see why it has won prizes. (  ) wendyrey | Sep 22, 2009 | Full of the heartbreak, poverty, tragedy and perfidy I've come to expect from Irish literature. At least as a 100 year old woman looking back, Roseanne McNulty does remember childhood happiness, never mind that she had her father, her husband and her son all taken from her, and has spent more than half of her lifetime confined to an "asylum" for the mentally ill. As we see her, recording the main events of her life, she seems far from insane. As we learn her story, both from her memory and from the investigation done by Dr. Grene, the superintendent of the mental hospital, it seems remarkable that she retains any coherent faculties at all. I loved the way this book was constructed, and how Roseanne's life story slowly rose to the surface like a developing photograph. It's difficult to discuss specifics without bringing in spoilers, which would...well...spoil it. Excellent use of recurring symbols, and parallel situations. Yes, you can see the ending coming long before it's all spelled out. But I had no objection to that at all. ( )1  laytonwoman3rd | Sep 13, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:15 -0400)
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