Sebastian Barry (2009) The Secret Scripture.

Sebastian Barry (2009) The Secret Scripture.

You should never step into the book you’ve read before (or something like that). Sebastian Barry is a terrific writer. This book won the Costa Book of the Year 2008. The Secret Scripture is in many ways the story of Ireland after the Famine, with a centurion Roseanne McNulty providing the handwritten shape of her life played out against the Civil War years in Ireland and the world wars that also came to Sligo.

Beginnings: Roseanne’s Testimony of Herself (Patient, Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital 1957—)

Roseanne’s testimony of herself is a narrative story of her girlhood and young adult life before she was incarcerated in Sligo’s Lunatic Asylum. The question of why she is there is implicit in her writing. But there is another narrative interbody with it. This comes from the psychiatrist who oversees her care, Dr Grene. The old hospital is closing. He is nearing retirement. In trying to decide about where Rosanne should go, the rights and wrongs of what has been done to her, he also has to map out the shape of his faltering marriage and what to do with his own life. One lies on and relies on the other. Judgement is dependent on knowing what you know and what you don’t know.

‘…it wasn’t so much whether she’d written the truth about herself or told the truth, or believed what she wrote or said was true, or even whether they were true things in themselves. The important thing seemed to me that the person who wrote and spoke was admirable, living and complete…from a psychiatric point of view I had totally failed to ‘help’ her to, to prise open the locked lids of the past…I preferred Roseann’s untruth to Fr Gaunt’s truth, because the former radiated health.’

Father Gaunt haunts Roseanne’s life as priests haunted Ireland. Roseanne was immediately suspect for being female. For priests such as Father Gaunt, even the Virgin Mary would have been suspect unless the Lord Jesus vouched for her. Roseanne was also suspect because she was extraordinarily beautiful. The kind of beauty that led men to temptation. Father Gaunt’s solution to marry a sixteen-year-old girl to a widower three times her age, had the merit of taking her out of circulation. And since she was Protestant destined for Hell, making her a follower not only of her husband, but the one true church and saving her soul.

Roseanne proved to be not as pliable material as Father Gaunt hoped. Her extraordinary story is not of failure, but of high spirits. A different kind of beauty. I can never remember what I wrote the last time, so I’ll reiterate it here, the ending was too chocolate-book for my liking. But this is a great story. Well worth the reading or re-reading. Read on.

https://amzn.to/48khBJ5