So gripping is this novel, in fact, and so simply touching that it is possible to forgive a lot. I was happy to indulge some painfully ripe dialogue and hurry on when the writing became more bathetic than poetic. Sometimes, however, it's too bad. On the very first page, for instance, we learn that swans "rode the river like some kind of plunging animals". Are we to assume that this is as opposed to non-animal robotic swans? And while Barry has many interesting things to say about history, his frequent straining for profundity can also produce absurdity: "History needs to be mightily inventive about human life because bare life is an accusation against man's dominion of the earth."

"The Secret Scripture" by Sebastian Barry is a poignant and beautifully written novel that explores themes of memory, faith, and the search for identity against the backdrop of Ireland's tumultuous history. The story unfolds through the eyes of Roseanne McNulty, an elderly woman confined to a mental institution, who reflects on her life and the events that led her there.

Barry's prose is lyrical and immersive, drawing readers into Roseanne's world as she recounts her past with vivid detail and emotional depth. The narrative shifts between her memories and the present-day perspective of a psychiatrist tasked with assessing her mental state, creating a layered exploration of truth and perception.

The themes of trauma, love, and resilience resonate throughout the book, particularly as Roseanne grapples with the societal and personal challenges she has faced. Barry's ability to weave historical context into the personal narrative enriches the story, making it not just a tale of one woman's life but also a reflection on the broader human experience.

Overall, "The Secret Scripture" is a powerful and haunting read that lingers in the mind long after the last page. Sebastian Barry has crafted a masterful work that beautifully captures the complexities of memory and the enduring spirit of its protagonist. This novel is a must-read for those who appreciate literary fiction that delves deep into the human condition.

This book is full of great characters. The writing is so beautiful and faultless. There are two main characters and their stories are narrated via diary entries. I liked this format. The ending was a complete surprise. So emotional

This was my first read by Sebastian Barry and whilst I thought it was beautifully written, with gloriously vivid imagery and I loved the innocent gentleness of Roseanne, it mostly did not captivate me. I enjoyed the twist towards the end though - I didn't see that coming!

Such a shame but I just couldn’t get into this. The storyline was brilliant but I found the writing style confusing in some places and that was a bit of a struggle. I really wanted to love this and there are some excellent reviews so it’s just my view of it.

Definitely worth a read and if can get into it your in for a treat.

Thank you Netgalley

I found this book really difficult to read to start with so much so that I wasn’t sure that I wanted to finish it but then something happened and suddenly I wanted to know more about Roseanne and something in her story worked its way into my head and heart. This story needs to be given the time to really be appreciated, to be fully understood. This is a beautifully told story of a very different and difficult time in history.

Hauntingly beautiful, bleak, shocking and powerful.

The two main characters are a 100 year old Irish lady who has spent most of her life incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, and the psychiatrist who is trying to decide where to send her now the hospital is closing.

The writing is rich, with the characters leaping off the page and a story with heartbreaking twists, spanning the changes in Irish catholic culture over the century of her life.

When I first started reading, I hadn't realised that this was the second instalment in the McNulty family series. Although it can be read alone, I went back and read the first and I'm so glad I did as it made this novel even more impactful.

It’s a measure of how much I loved this book — my first by Barry — that I immediately went out and bought up his backlist. The writing is exquisite, the characters bold and sympathetic, and the storytelling in turns bleakly shocking and hauntingly beautiful.

The narrative revolves around two characters: 100 year-old Roseanne McNulty who has been incarcerated in Roscommon psychiatric hospital for most of her adult life, and Dr Grene who has been charged with evaluating Roseanne’s mental health with a view to deciding her future when the hospital shuts down.

Their respective stories are revealed through journal entries; Roseanne’s hidden under her mattress, and Dr Grene’s penned late at night in the loneliness of his bedroom. What we learn is in effect a microcosm of the history of Ireland through its most troubled times. It is a damning indictment of the Catholic Church — its abuse of power, its treatment of women, its propping up of ignorance and injustice — and at times makes for heartbreaking, if compulsive, reading.

The ending floored me completely. I didn’t see it coming, so delicately was it unveiled. But I wept, unashamedly.

What a powerful, unforgettable read.

A stunning story written in the most beautiful phrases. I have never highlighted so many passages for their eloquence. I found the story of Roseanne Clear such a moving one. A character that will stay with me. Treated so poorly by many around her and surrounded by only a few angels. My heart ached for her. It takes some skill to make us so enthralled by a character and.their story that we feel every ill and celebrate every triumph. A modern masterpiece.#thesecretscripture #sebastianbarry #netgalley

I thought I will enjoy it, but in the end this book was not for me, or at least not at the moment. Maybe at one point in the future I will pick it up again and I will read it through different lenses and it will have a different impact on me. Still, I am happy to find a new author whose work I want to check.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this story, and was interested to see how the story developed.

5★
“For history as far as I can see is not the arrangement of what happens, in sequence and in truth, but a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth.” from Roseanne’s ‘Testimony of Herself’

What a mighty book! Roseanne McNulty is one hundred years old, living in the Sligo Lunatic Asylum, which is destined for demolition. Dr Grene is the psychiatrist charged with reducing patient numbers, deciding who can be safely released into the community.

He met Roseanne Clear, his oldest patient, when he arrived thirty years ago, but he hasn’t been able to find out when or why she was sent there. As he questions her and tries to locate information, he writes in his Commonplace Book, some of which makes up his chapters, along with his own memories and musings.

Meanwhile, Roseanne is writing her own story, her testimony of herself, and hiding the pages under a loose floorboard in her room. Her chapters are what she remembers as her truth, but even she is unsure how accurately she interpreted her childhood.

One character is a constant presence in her life: “the parish priest, a little perky darting man called Father Gaunt who loomed so large later in my own story, if a small man can be said to loom large.”

In her chapters, she writes lovingly of her father, a grave-digger, and tells how he was unjustly demoted to rat-catcher, making the family even poorer. As a child, she says she went everywhere with him, proudly helping him catch rats. She writes about the dangers from soldiers, police, and shootings.

“It is difficult to describe the noise that guns make in a small enclosed space, but it would make the bones drop out of your flesh.”

Later, when she’s a bit older, she describes her mother’s condition.

“ …because my mother’s wits were now in an attic of her head which had neither door nor stair, or at least none that I could find. If we were to eat, I must find work of any kind.”

As a young woman in Sligo, in the northwest of Ireland, she was a popular partner at dances on weekends at the Plaza, fell in love with Tom McNulty, and married him. So why is she in this asylum and when did she arrive? Where are her people? In fact, who are her people?

Dr Grene feels compelled to find out before he can assess her, but he’s wary of her answers. Roseanne writes that he has asked what she remembers about how she came to be here.

“ ‘I do remember terrible dark things, and loss, and noise, but it is like one of those terrible dark pictures that hang in churches, God knows why, because you cannot see a thing in them.’

‘Mrs McNulty, that is a beautiful description of traumatic memory.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes, it is.’ ”

He doesn’t doubt her there, but he still has reservations about the facts, as she relates them.

“Like some psychotics she was very certain about, and consistent in, what she seemed to know. Yet she also confessed openly to ignorance on many matters, which suggested to me she was not psychotic, but that her memory too perhaps had suffered the silverfish of age. A psychotic person often supplies answers to everything, whatever their truth. They intensely dislike not knowing, because it brings on the pain and storm of confusion.”

The silverfish of age - pesky little creatures.

Meanwhile, he’s grieving the recent death of his wife, Bet. His description of her parents’ opinion of him at the time of the wedding shows how fractured religious affiliations were (are?) in Ireland.

“My parents were Catholic, which might have stood in their favour, except that they were English Catholics, a people in the eyes of my inlaws more Protestant than the Protestants themselves, and at the very least, deeply deeply mysterious, like creatures from some other time, when Henry VIII was wanting to marry. They must have thought Bet was marrying a phantom.”

He thinks about how he happened to end up in Sligo, at this institution, at this time, and how on earth he will turn people out of care. How did the patients/inmates arrive here? He hesitates over the word ‘inmate’.

“But as the place was constructed in the late eighteenth century as a charitable institution for the ‘healthful asylum and superior correction of wounded seats of thought’ the word inmate does always spring to mind.”

Wounded seats of thought - an old, interesting description of mental illness. About the old men, he says:

“They are certainly not mentally ill the most of them, they are just the ‘detritus’ of the system, as I once heard them referred to. One of them that I know well fought in the Congo with the Irish army. A good few of them in fact are ex-army men. I suppose we lack a place like Chelsea barracks, or Les Invalides in Paris. Who would be an old soldier in Ireland?”

Who indeed? And who would be the doctor trying to decide their futures?

I love Barry’s writing and his characters, and although I haven’t yet read the early McNulty Family book, "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty", I’m sure it isn’t necessary to appreciate what a terrific work this is, well worth its many prizes and its nomination for the 2008 Booker Prize.

Thanks to NetGalley and Faber and Faber for a copy for review. Although published in 2015, it has been promoted to publicise the recent release of Old God's Time, which I also read and reviewed.

The Guardian has a wonderful interview with Barry, dated 7 March 2020, "Family stories mean a whole different thing when you are 60."

Link to Guardian article:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/07/sebastian-barry-family-stories-mean-a-while-dofferent-thing-when-you-are-60

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is a haunting and beautifully written novel that tells the story of Roseanne McNulty, a 100-year-old woman living in a mental institution in rural Ireland. Through a series of journal entries, we learn about Roseanne's life and the tragic events that led to her institutionalization.

Barry's writing is lyrical and evocative, and he creates a rich and vivid portrait of rural Ireland in the early 20th century. The novel is filled with complex and deeply flawed characters, and Barry does a fantastic job of exploring their motivations and relationships with great nuance and sensitivity.

What sets The Secret Scripture apart from other novels is its exploration of the themes of memory, truth, and identity. The book raises important questions about the reliability of memory and the ways in which our perceptions of the past can be influenced by our own biases and beliefs.

Overall, The Secret Scripture is a beautifully crafted and deeply moving novel that offers a compelling portrait of a woman's struggle to understand her own past and come to terms with the events that shaped her life. It is a testament to the power of storytelling and the importance of understanding our own histories in order to find meaning and purpose in our lives. Highly recommended.

This is a wonderfully told tale that encompasses so many themes: the accuracy of memory, grief, the mistreatment of others who fall foul of society’s standards, love, hope…and it’s all told against the backdrop of Ireland in the twentieth century. Readers, find some quiet alone time to settle in with this one because you won't stop reading until you've turned the final page. Highly recommended !

Roseanne McNulty is nearly one hundred and has spent most of her life in Roscommon Mental Hospital. Now the decrepit old hospital is being torn down and the residents are being assessed by the hospital psychiatrist, Dr Grene to see whether they are well enough to be returned to society or need to be moved to another asylum.

Through their respective journals, Roseanne and Dr Grene write about their talks together and tell their respective stories. Roseanne’s is a shockingly heartbreaking tale, one of harsh unjustified treatment meted out by the bigoted and aided by the Irish Catholic church.

Originally published in 2008 and nominated for the Booker Prize, it’s a moving tale, beautifully written, reminding us of Ireland’s troubled past and the power of the Catholic Church, particularly over women. Roseanne is indeed a remarkable woman to have found peace and forgiveness despite all that happened to her.

A very compelling and well written story tracing the history of a vulnerable elderly woman in a mental hospital who is being assessed for care in the community upon the hospital’s closure. Narrated through flashbacks from the patient herself, some of which appear to be unreliable, and the doctor’s notes as he tries to determine the reasons for her incarceration, a story unfolds of misogyny, domestic abuse and institutional corruption during a turbulent period in Irish history. The plot “twist” can be seen from miles away but that doesn’t detract from the story’s charm or make it any less compelling.

As one of those readers who didn’t read the book on its first outing, I am grateful to NetGalley for its rediscovery.

Roseanne has been cruelly placed in an asylum by her husband, where she has ended up spending her whole adult life there. Institutionalised by convenience, for suggesting she acted inappropriately as a young woman.
It is a powerful and beautifully crafted exploration of a woman who has adapted to the cruel cards dealt to her. She has endured a whole life out of her own true control, mainly keeping her own counsel.

Her story gradually and carefully emerges when the kind psychologist faced with closing down and discharging/rehoming its internees starts listening and cross referencing her records to learn what truly happened.

Stepping back into history to 1907, you find yourself in a highly compelling, absorbing and emotional backdrop. With nimble structuring and deft timing, Barry manages to effortlessly weave in the past and the present in such an authentic and captivating manner. A story of power, love, betrayal and injustice through the wise insights of a now old woman effectively imprisoned for over 60 years.

I was completely swept up in the story. Roseanne is a wonderful character, entirely likeable, easy to empathise with and most dignified. I felt angry on her behalf and in awe of her acceptance. The denouement is excellent. Please read it to appreciate the mastery of its writing.

A beautifully written reflective story, Roseanne looking back at the century of her life, alongside the caring Dr Grene. Their two stories run side by side, weaving into the others. The ending was somewhat predictable but no less lovely.

A lovely comforting read.

A lyrical and sometimes heartbreaking story of Ireland in the twentieth century, narrated by the ancient Roseanne McNulty and her psychiatrist Dr Grene. Roseanne has been incarcerated in an asylum (now a mental hospital), for many, many years for reasons that are more to do with the social and religious structures of Ireland than any “madness”. Dr Grene is assessing the residents for “care in the community” as the home is to be closed. He is intrigued by Roseanne and is trying to discover the original reason for her incarceration as the records have been lost long ago. Meanwhile Roseanne is secretly writing down her memories of a long and difficult life. I was unaware that this was the second in a trilogy, and it worked perfectly as a stand alone novel- intriguing, compassionate and insightful.. I will definitely be seeking out the other books in the trilogy as Barry’s prose is such a pleasure to read.

It was the first book I read by Sebastian Barry and I loved it.
It's not an easy read: it talks about violence, tragic moments in Irish history and the influx of the Catholic church.
It could be a tragedy but there's almost a dreamlike atmosphere at times.
Roseanne is the ultime unreliable narrator but, at the same time, she's able to give us her vision of history and of her life.
The storytelling and the style of writing are exception and I loved every moment of this story
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine