The Secret Scripture
by Sebastian Barry
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Book Reviews of The Secret Scripture
Book Review: Dark Irish tale of a 100-year-old woman that's good but too melodramatic
Summary: 3 Stars
So many awful things happen to Roseanne McNulty, the protagonist of Sebastian Barry's Booker-shortlisted novel "The Secret Scripture," that at a certain point I couldn't help but look forward to more of them. McNulty's a century-old Irish woman who has been living at a mental hospital for so long that nobody can remember why she was sent there in the first place. A staff psychiatrist, Dr. Grene, undertakes an investigation to determine whether she had genuine mental problems or was institutionalized for "moral" reasons.
As her hospital and home for 50 years is being prepared for demolition, Roseanne tells her life story in longhand, hiding the pages under a floorboard. These passages alternate with the psychiatrist's "commonplace book," his observations from the ongoing investigation.
McNulty grows up Protestant among the Catholics of Sligo on Ireland's northwestern coast, raised by a gravedigger father and a mother he brought home from Southhampton, England. The family becomes caught in the Irish civil war in the early '20s, her father demoted to rat-catcher by the local Catholic priest after he asks him to give last rites to a rebel. Roseanne's mind obscures the worst of her life's tragedies by changing the details, as we learn later, but the ones she relates clearly are grim enough, as when her cherished father accidentally burns down an orphanage and kills 123 girls. Taking his demotion with aplomb, her father had devised his own method of dispatching rats: Dip each in paraffin, kill it with a conk on the head, then drop it into a fire. (It says a lot about Roseanne's childhood that she enjoys tagging along with her father on these jobs.) Unfortunately, step 2 really should follow step 1, as they discover when a paraffin-drenched rat escapes and scurries back into the orphanage, climbs down a chimney and catches fire. Father and daughter keep this mistake a secret between themselves.
The Catholic priest Father Gaunt is enormously cruel, dispensing moral decrees with absolute certainty to terrible effect in the life of Roseanne, whom he loathes for (a) being so beautiful she's a "mournful temptation" to the men of Sligo, and (b) refusing to convert when she weds a Catholic. After she's seen with another man in a suspicious but innocent circumstance, Gaunt succesfully pursues the annulment of her marraige with the Vatican, then icily relates the news:
If you had followed my advice, Roseanne, some years ago, and put your faith in the true religion, if you had behaved with the beautiful decorum of a Catholic wife, you would not be facing these difficulties. But I do appreciate that you are not entirely responsible. Nymphomania is of course by definition a madness.
More terrible things happen to Roseanne, of course, as likeable a long-suffering protagonist as Father Gaunt is despicable. Barry tells a larger story about Irish strife and the fallibility of history as filtered through human memory, but I don't know enough about Ireland to appreciate it fully. Though "The Secret Scripture" features two great characters and evocative writing, I'm surprised it rates the Booker shortlist and has become the betting favorite to win. The book's as melodramatic as a romance novel, though it's long on corpses, rats and dementia and short on heaving bodices.
Book Review: A thought-provoking read
Summary: 5 Stars
The `scripture' of the title is an account by Roseanne McNulty, now 100 years old, of the events that led to her incarceration in an Irish mental institution, an account written in her own words and which she conceals beneath a loose floorboard in her cell.
Don't be put off by the writing style. The story is Roseanne's, expressed in the way she would have expressed it. The language may seem clumsy at times, but some passages shine - her description of a rainstorm, for instance. I really felt I was out there with her, battling along the sand, never sure whether I was heading in the direction I wanted to go.
It is not perhaps the most gripping read, but it's certainly compelling and holds the interest, evoking strong feelings of sympathy and injustice. The story of Roseanne's young life is set against the background of the troubles in Ireland in the early years of the twentieth century. Her mother is mentally unstable and rarely speaks to her, so it is her father on whom she depends and to whom she is close. For some time she lived the happy existence of a normal teenager, and you wonder what could happen that would eventually lead to her being locked away from the world. She is a protestant, but nonetheless her life is in many ways ruled by Fr Gaunt, the catholic priest. The more he interferes, the more meddling and unpleasant he seems, and the more I disliked him.
She has been in the asylum for longer than anyone can remember, sent there for reasons long since lost and forgotten. Perhaps she shouldn't be there at all. Perhaps she should never have been admitted in the first place. For several decades she has been in the care of Dr Grene, a psychiatrist who is himself approaching retirement but who has only recently taken a greater interest in her case and tries to find out as much about her past as possible. From time to time, Roseanne's account is interspersed with Dr Grene's own story. In this respect the structure of the book is a mirror image of `The Other Side of You' by Salley Vickers, where the psychiatrist's was the major story and the patient's the minor. But there the similarity ends, apart from one traumatic incident in the childhood of both psychiatrists.
Dr Grene's story is of considerably less interest than Roseanne's and at times seemed superfluous, although after he had read Fr Gaunt's report from all those years ago Dr Grene's musings about the nature of history were interesting. By the end of the book I could see why the author had included his story, but his character was so undeveloped that I never particularly cared what happened to him. By contrast, I was disturbed and incensed at the various injustices meted out to Roseanne.
As for the denouement, I still haven't decided whether it was masterful or so unlikely as to seem contrived but, whichever, it certainly came as a surprise.
Overall, though, I enjoyed the book and considered it a worthwhile read. It isn't the most exciting tale you'll ever read, nor is it the greatest literature. But if you like something memorable and thought provoking then you should give this a try.
Book Review: An elegant and intelligent novel of love, murder, betrayal and sacrifice
Summary: 4 Stars
Growing up in Ireland, during the Great War, golden-haired Roseanne Clear adores her Presbyterian father, Joe, a happy and curious individual who is the "cleanest man in the Christian world, all Sligo anyhow." Her mother, Cissy, is an anxious woman who "suffers strangely under the halo of beauty." The greatest joy of Roseanne's young life is walking with her exotic-looking mother at dusk to meet her father on his way home from a local Catholic cemetery, where he works as superintendent.
But death arrives unannounced at the Clears' doorstep when the Irish troubles come calling at the cemetery. After that dark and disturbing night, Roseanne's young life, and that of her family, changes forever. Shortly afterwards, Father Gaunt, a local priest who has "no antennae for grief," informs Joe that he is to be removed from his job at the cemetery. City officials have found Joe a new job as a rat catcher. The once proud and fastidious caretaker becomes "a living man exiled from the dead."
Following the family's drastic change in circumstances, her father is not the same. After his death and her mother's descent into madness, Roseanne, who is still in her teens, tries to carve out a future for herself. She finds a job, falls in love and marries Tom McNulty, "the decentest man." But her happiness is short-lived, as she eventually ends up in Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital, a place "where sisters, mothers, grandmothers, spinsters, all forgotten, lie."
Half a century later the hospital is on the verge of collapse and slated to be torn down. Before the facility is destroyed, Dr. William Grene, the Senior Psychiatrist who has attended the hospital's patients for more than three decades, has been called upon to assess which patients can be put back into the community and which are to be moved to a new facility. For years he has been inexplicably drawn to Mrs. McNulty, and as the time approaches for the hospital's demolition, he searches to find the reason for her hospitalization.
During her decades in the mental institution, Roseanne has learned the virtue of silence, but she still has good eyesight and a steady hand. While Dr. Grene searches for the truth about her, Roseanne carefully documents her recollections in a manuscript that she hides under a floorboard beneath her bed. As the good doctor unravels the complicated and conflicting accounts of her life, and as she records her memories of the past, they uncover deeply buried and safely guarded secrets, while coming to realize the truth about themselves.
Roseanne, like the Ireland of her birth, is complex and flawed, yet deserving of love and grace. In spite of her dire and tangled circumstances, although neglected and forlorn, her spirit endures and hope prevails.
Acclaimed author Sebastian Barry has written an elegant and intelligent novel of love, murder, betrayal and sacrifice. It's a thought-provoking look at the destructive power of well-intentioned people to destroy lives and the redemptive power of truth to heal, no matter how long it takes.
--- Reviewed by Donna Volkenannt
Book Review: "Morality has its own civil wars, with its own victims in their own time and place."
Summary: 4 Stars
In his distinctly Irish novel, set in County Sligo and Roscommon, a mental institution, a perhaps century old woman, Roseanne Cleary McNulty, pens a diary of her long life, which she hides in her room under the floorboards. Retrieving the notebook only when it's safe, Roseanne reveals a deeply loving relationship with a father who dies far too young and a mother who withdraws over time into the solitude of a troubled mind. Presbyterians, the Cleary's are an anomaly in Catholic Sligo, Joe Cleary dominating the landscape of his daughter's formative years. Reeling from his death and her mother's complete disinterest in the world around her, Roseanne is a naïve young woman, unprepared for what awaits, falling quickly in love with Tom McNulty. Tom and his brothers, and their domineering mother are the faces of the stubborn, loyal Irish rebels who spend their years fighting for independence, closing ranks against outsiders.
Much at work in Roseanne's life is a priest, Father Gaunt, a man invested in his own arrogance and misogyny, who visits his hatred and mistrust of women on the innocent Roseanne. It is through Gaunt's efforts that Roseanne's marriage to Tom is ruined, no one of consequence to protect the girl, left staggering at the blows fate has dealt. Having been institutionalized for over half her life at the time she writes her memoirs, the remarkable thing about this character, as so beautifully rendered by Barry, is her inherent generosity of spirit and disinclination to harsh judgment of those who have wronged her. And while Roseanne is writing of her father and her marriage, Dr. Grene is charged with determining the future placement of his patient, Roscommon soon to be vacated and completely demolished. Unwilling to interrogate a woman whose face still carries the remnants of her exceptional beauty, Grene becomes fascinated by the small details he uncovers, hints that the truth may differ from Roseanne's recollection of her past.
Alternating these two stories (Dr. Grene beset by a terrible personal loss while investigating Roseanne's life), the author reveals an Ireland in turmoil, a beautiful woman caught up in a family enacting their part of that troubled history, cast out by the venality of a priest. It is Roseanne's great tragedy that her striking beauty is wielded as a sword to annihilate her world, her fond recollections of father and husband- at least for a time- the only buffer against the cruelty of the world. Roseanne's story is important because it is her voice, among many, that speaks to the plight of women ill-used by a hypocritically moral society and a Catholic church that has the power to ruin a life with one harsh judgment. Barry delivers an extraordinarily dear character in Roseanne and an empathetic doctor in Grene, setting the stage for a denouement that weaves these two lives intimately together, each in need of solace: "There is something greater than judgment. I think it is called mercy." Luan Gaines/ 2008.
Book Review: Oh, I didn't like this one at *all*.
Summary: 2 Stars
Before I start, I'm going to share that this is a pretty nasty review. I should warn you that I appear to be in the minority about The Secret Scripture. Many people really like it a lot, and you should balance that affection against my negative opinion.
Around one third of the way through the book, I incredulously flipped back to the front cover. "Shortlisted for the Booker? Really?" That was my first moment of disconnect with the book. I have had that kind of moment with Booker listed selections before, and generally they tend to knit themselves together for me by the end of the novel. By which I mean that even if I end up not really liking the book, I do eventually understand what what others find appealing.
My moment of realization with The Secret Scripture never appeared. I *really* disliked this book. Barry is a skilled stylist, but in a precious and flowery kind of way that completely runs against my taste. Even so, I could have forgiven it if the plot had been any more interesting. But it wasn't.
This book for me comes down squarely in a genre that I truly am beginning to hate-- I'm calling it academic gothic. I guess that it isn't really new, but somehow lately there seem to be a lot of entries in the field floating around. The Secret Scripture is kissing cousins to The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield, which I also kind of hated. (So a note to you, dear reader, if you liked the Setterfield then you may well like the Barry and should pay no attention to me at all.)
What did I dislike so much about the plot? Well, everything, actually. At the top of my hate is the surprise secret at the end which I figured out very early on in the book. I hated the device of the diary entries which read like no diary entries that humans have ever written. I hated the predictable story, a rehash of the woman wronged. I hated the half-baked romance which seemed to justify itself as literature by drawing on the conflict. I liked, literally, nothing.
I feel moved now to stop and apologize to Mr. Barry. I honestly don't often have this kind of allergic reaction to a book. I normally am nearly mealy-mouthed about finding things to both like and dislike. I cannot help but think that such a strong and visceral dislike necessarily says more about me than it does about your book. I promise that I will give something else a try in the future, because I suspect that it is the plot that made me hate this so much.
I can't recommend this. But others obviously like it very much-- make up your mind for yourself.