My main concern in the last twenty-five years has been to go back and find members of my own family who were not talked about for various reasons, forgotten, quietly erased. Sebastian Barry
The central character of The Secret Scripture is Roseanne McNulty a lady nearing her 100th birthday who has lived in an Irish psychiatric hospital for over 60 years. The hospital is about to close down and director Dr Grene has to assess patients for their suitability to either move to the new hospital or be placed back into society. Dr Grene is curious as to why Mrs McNulty was admitted to the hospital and is suspicious of the motives to admit her in the first place.
So begins a book consisting of two narratives. The narrative of 100 yo Roseanne who is recalling her younger life and the narrative of Dr Grene as he tries to piece together Roseanne's life from records and interviews with those close to her.
With any narrative we must first consider the reliability of the narrator. Is the narrator telling the truth? Does the narrator have the whole story? In this novel we have to balance the reliability of the memory of a centenarian with the subjective interviews conducted by Dr Grene in order to piece together Roseanne's life.
Sebastian Barry based the Roseanne's character loosely on that of one of his great aunts who was reputedly placed in the Sligo Mental Asylum for being 'no good' in some fashion. Perhaps for being outside the bounds of society's mores at the time or for the crime of being beautiful.
Sligo is a location that is linked to Sebastian Barry's own history but also serves as a bleak little visited outpost of an Ireland close to the border with Northern Ireland. The character Roseanne is a protestant in a catholic town and grew up during "the troubles" and civil war of the 1920s. This book is as much about the impact of the civil war on Ireland and the relationship between the catholic and protestant churches as it is about the plight of Roseanne herself.
Sebastian Barry sees his novels as 'a family' and the character of Roseanne in fact appeared in his previous novel The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty. In turn characters from other books appear in The Secret Scripture, thereby creating an interwoven family of stories across a number of novels.
The Secret Scripture was on the shortlist for the 2008 Man Booker Prize and won the Costa Prize in 2008 (formerly called the Whitbread prize). It is rumoured that despite being the favourite to win the Booker, the novel's ending was the reason it was looked over.
Seven people attended this bookgroup discussion with the scores ranging from 7.5 to 8.5 and an average of 8/10 across the group.
