The Secret Scripture - Softcover

Barry, Sebastian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143115693 ISBN 13: 9780143115694

Publisher: Penguin Books, 2009

Synopsis

An epic story of family, love, and unavoidable tragedy from the two-time Man Booker Prize finalist. Now a major motion picture starring Rooney Mara. Sebastian Barry's latest novel, Days Without End, is now available.

Sebastian Barry's novels have been hugely admired by readers and critics, and in 2005 his novel A Long Long Way was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In The Secret Scripture, Barry revisits County Sligo, Ireland, the setting for his previous three books, to tell the unforgettable story of Roseanne McNulty. Once one of the most beguiling women in Sligo, she is now a resident of Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital and nearing her hundredth year. Set against an Ireland besieged by conflict, The Secret Scripture is an engrossing tale of one woman's life, and a poignant story of the cruelties of civil war and corrupted power. The Secret Scripture is now a film starring Rooney Mara, Eric Bana, and Vanessa Redgrave.

About this title

Review

The acclaim that has greeted Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture is varied and enthusiastic, and it's not hard to see why. When Frank McGuiness praised it for ‘raw, rough beauty’ and described Sebastian Barry's fiction as ‘unique’ and ‘magnificent’, this claim was no hostage to fortune; just a few sentences of the prose here will convince most readers of the justice of those words. As in the best-selling A Long Long Way, Barry is concerned with the imperatives of telling a story, but in a literary form that is rich with both psychological understanding and a skilful conjuring of time and place.

Roseanne McNulty may (or may not) be on the point of nearing her 100th birthday -- but there is little certainty about this fact. In her twilight years, her destiny is uncertain, as the Roscommon Mental Hospital -- her home for so many years of her life -- is on the point of closing. As the fateful hour approaches, Roseanne spends her time of talking to her psychiatrist of many years, Dr Grene. The relationship between the two is strangely interdependent, and the doctor is also attempting to come to terms with the death of his wife. As we learn more about the two principal protagonists, we are presented with a rich and subtle picture of human relationships -- and the (often unintentional) damages that we all do to each other.

The form of the book consists of the separate journals of Roseanne and Dr Grene, and we gradually learn about Roseanne’s family in Sligo in the 1930s. What emergence is a poignant personal history; it is also a subtly ambitious picture of nothing less than the Irish psyche at a particular point in its history. There are echoes here of another great Irish chronicler of the human condition, William Trevor, and The Secret Scripture is no worse for that. --Barry Forshaw

Review

"[Barry writes] in language of surpassing beauty. . . . It is like a song, with all the pulse of the Irish language, a song sung liltingly and plaintively from the top of Ben Bulben into the airy night." --Dinitia Smith, The New York Times

"Barry recounts all this in prose of often startling beauty. Just as he describes people stopping in the street to look at Roseanne, so I often found myself stopping to look at the sentences he gave her, wanting to pause and copy them down." --Margot Livesey, The Boston Globe

"Luminous and lyrical."--O, The Oprah Magazine

"A great novel about a ninety-nine-year-old woman...trying to understand the truth of her life...Along the way are some of the most beautifully formed prose passages I have ever read." --Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization

"Written in captivating, lyrical prose, Barry's novel is both a sparkling literary puzzle and a stark cautionary tale of corrupted power." --Publishers Weekly

"Part of Barry's artistry is the sheer poetry of his prose, now heart-stoppingly lyrical, now heart-poundingly thrilling. An unforgettable portrait of mid-twentieth-century Ireland." --Booklist

"It is a poignant story of the horrors and hypocrisies of rural Ireland, the cruelties of civil war, and the pernicious influence of the priesthood. Roseanne is a vivid and engaging protagonist, and Barry makes rich use of the circumlocutions of his native tongue." --The Daily Mail (London)

"Dark, awkward, and exceptionally finely written."--The Telegraph (London)

"In this book, the worlds each character builds are significantly, tantalizingly estranged from each other. The novel's delight lies in the way in which the two tales--and, eventually the two lives--begin to coalesce, to the utter surprise of both the characters and the reader."
--The Economist

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0143115693
• ISBN 13: 9780143115694
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336