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The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

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781	50	5,484	(3.87)	90

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Info:	Faber and Faber (2008), Hardcover, 300 pages
Member:	rubyredbooks
Collections:	Your library	Rating:
Tags:	fiction, historical, best books 2008, bookclub 2, read 2009

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▾Member reviews

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Big winner at the Irish Book Awards 2009:http://www.irishbookawards.ie/AwardDe...

catalogthis | Nov 24, 2009 |

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! (

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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. (

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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. (

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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 |

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People/Characters

Important places

Important events

Awards and honors

Booker Prize Longlist (2008)

Booker Prize Shortlist (2008)

Costa (Novel, 2008)

Costa (Book of the Year, 2008)

Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist (Fiction, 2008)

(show all 7 items)

Epigraph

The greatest imperfection is in out inward sight that is to be ghosts unto our own eyes.
--Sir Thomas Browne Christian Morals

Of the numbers who study or at least read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! . . . Besides there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient and modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes.
--Maria Edgeworth, Preface to Castle Rackrent

Dedication

For Margaret Synge

First words

The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say.

Quotations

Last words

(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Fraser, Antonia

Cahill, Thomas

Livesey, Margot

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▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr. Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0670019402, Hardcover)

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.

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:15 -0400)

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